


Some Turn to Dust or to Gold

by asingerofsongs, MayGlenn



Series: Stars and Skies [20]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety-riddled BB-8, Awesome Phasma, Carbon Sickness, Content Warning: Hux, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Visions, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Rey, Hurt poe, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Leadership, Minor Character Death, Mostly hurt, Multi, Sexual/Asexual Relationship, Sparring, Stormtrooper Culture, Stormtrooper Rebellion, Touch-Averse, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-11-05 23:52:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11024193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asingerofsongs/pseuds/asingerofsongs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn
Summary: "What are you afraid of, Finn?" Maz asked.Finn took a few seconds to answer."I'm afraid I won't feel Poe." Finn still only had a passive sense of the Force, and nothing felt brighter and better than Rey and Poe—feeling them together was unparalleled.He didn’t want to know what it felt like to be missing one of them."Well, you'll feel him either way," she said simply, which didn't exactly make Finn feel better....Rey sniffed. "Okay, I—I'm here. I'm sorry."She meant it. She reached for Finn's hand, and held it.Whenever the Dark seemed to beckon her—Kylo Ren was once loved, and in spite of it he embraced the Dark Side, she reminded herself—she knew she could rely on Finn to be in the Light guiding her back.Kylo Ren may have been loved, but he didn't have Finn.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beautifullights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifullights/gifts).



> This fic is dedicated to beautifullights for her constant caring and commenting.

Captain Karé Kun's world had narrowed to a mug of watered-down moonshine.

She had buried two lovers, two friends, two comrades-in-arms—but not _literally_ buried, either, which made it worse. Hope lingered too long because she couldn't see their bodies—couldn’t confirm they were dead—not that she could _see anything_ , which made it worse.

Two weeks later, and the Resistance was holding a Wake for their lost—one hundred sixty-seven dead, reducing the Resistance by over a third. They had settled under the protection of Maz the Pirate Queen, but she hid them in caves like so much smuggled goods to keep them from spying eyes that would inevitably make their way through her cantina. It was a lot of sitting in wet, cramped spaces without light of the sun and nothing to do but listen to the groans of the wounded and pretend to not hear your friends crying.

Dr. Kalonia assured the pilots that the blindness was temporary, but two weeks later and no one blinded by the First Order weapon could see a thing. The good doctor had other patients to worry about—the General was still in a coma, Admiral Statura was conscious but confined to bedrest, and many others were more seriously injured—and she was working in a bantha-kriffing  _cave_ with borrowed medical supplies. It was a wonder any of them were alive.

The joke at the Wake was that the moonshine was safe for the pilots to drink, since they were already blind.

Karé wasn't sure how much she had had. Some kind soul with sight kept her mug full, that was all that mattered, while they all swapped stories about those they lost and laughed and cried.

Snap was well on his way to killing himself by the sound of it—someone who could _see_ was cutting him off, meaning a man of his size had drunk at least a gallon of this swill—having taken Poe's death hard.

Oh, that was _Finn_. His voice sounded hoarse, so she hadn't recognized him. Karé wondered when he had last slept. Any order and comfort they had she knew she had Finn to thank for. Things weren't good, but they could have been a lot worse. How was he holding it together—much less what was left of the Resistance?

"SEVENS I HAVE TO PEE," Jessika said loudly, knocking Karé's arm hard enough that most of her drink ended up...somewhere.

Sevens sighed deeply and switched Jess' cup with Karé's— _More for me,_ Karé thought—so they could avoid any drink-related messes on the way to the bathroom.

And by bathroom, Sevens really meant another cave where they'd been able to construct very basic toilets—they were essentially pits in the ground. But each had a makeshift curtain around it for privacy, which at this point felt like a luxury. Sevens still felt awkward about helping Jess do such a small thing as using the bathroom, but not out of any concern for themself: they were reasonably certain that Jess hated it, as they'd have hated it, regardless of who it was coming from.

"You know we could probably use that alcohol as since kind of heat source," Sevens commented, trying their best to pretend everything in the world was normal, that helping their girlfriend crouch to take a piss in a hole in the ground was normal.

"Set my hair on fire and burn me like a candle," Jess suggested. "I'd be more use than I am now," she added sullenly.

She knew she was _lucky_ to have Sevens, that the other blind and injured often didn't have anybody they were close to left alive. Snap had peed on himself once already, and not because he was drunk but because he didn't ask for help. It was awful. And she could at least wipe her own ass, which was more than could be said for some of the wounded, who were more badly injured, and they didn't have the proper medical equipment to treat, or enough bacta to heal quickly. She had heard rumors that General Organa was in _diapers_ because they didn't have sterile catheters, but Jess was trying not to picture that.

"Thank you," she said, near tears as Sevens was now washing her hands for her. "Thank you." She hiccupped. "I'm not crying, I'm drunk," she said in her defense.

"But you're also crying," Sevens told her, and Jess let this slide.

"Can you help Karé, too? Later? To get ready for bed, I mean? She—she doesn't have—oh, Sev!" Jessika cried, flinging her arms around Sevens' neck and sobbing.

Sevens pulled Jess closer, wrapping their arms around her and maybe, hopefully, giving her some feeling of safety, of home.

"Of course I will," they hummed. "Oh, Jess. Love, if I could—" but they couldn't take the pain away or bring back the dead. "I've got you," they said instead, holding Jess tight and kissing her hair. It was still kind of marvelous to Sevens how they mourned their lost here.

Stormtroopers were expected to forget their dead.

"Come on, let's go find Karé right now and see if she's ready for bed. I'm tired of being awake," they said. Sevens’ _soul_ felt tired, and while sleep wouldn't help it, at least in sleep they didn't have to feel it.

"Okay," Jessika said. She had gotten good at following, and Sevens good at leading, so Jess had looped her arm through theirs and trusted them to lead her safely through the caves. The Wake was still loud, which made sensing the world around her confusing, but Jess drew near to Sevens and followed until she stopped. "Karé?"

"Yeah, Testor?"

"You ready for bed?"

"I...still have a drink," Karé said, sounding uncertain about that.

"I think the only legal use for that drink is stripping paint off starships," Sevens said, and they gently took the cup and set it to the side. "You tired, or you want to stay up?"

"Neither," she said, shrugging. "Don't care."

Sevens figured this probably meant they could decide, and they touched her shoulder gently.

"Come on, we all need sleep," they said, and slid a steadying hand under Karé's elbow when she wove to her feet.

"Whoa, shit," Karé said, "Can' rember th' lasstime I was this drunk." She clutched at Sevens' arm and then paused. "Nahwait. Th' boloball game. Poe 'n Finn'd left 'n me 'n Iolo were takin' bets what they were doin'.”

Then she burst into tears.

Jess reached out, patting the air until she found her friend and fellow pilot, and pulled her into a hug. What a pathetic picture they must make, two women too blind to dress themselves and too drunk to stop crying, just clutching at each other—luckily, neither of them had to look at themselves. Karé especially hated being seen without makeup.

"Come on, come on. We're gonna go to bed. Sev is gonna help you, okay?" Jessika said, pressing gentle fingers to Karé's face, thumbing away tear-tracks. "I love you, okay, girl? You're not alone. I'm sure we can talk Sevens here into a threesome if..."

"Uh, beg pardon?"

At that Karé laughed, wetly, and Jess laughed, too, and kissed her cheek.

"Thanks, but I like men..."

"We could buy you a hooker, I'm sure. We are at a seedy pirate bar."

Karé sighed and sniffed, leaning into Jess for another hug. "I just... I want Iolo back. I miss him constantly and I can't stop crying but it doesn't help. It just _hurts_ all the damn time."

She paused, leaning her cheek against Jess' chest, and whispered. "I don't know if I can do this.”

"You can," Sevens said, drawing both women into a hug. "We'll help you." They stepped away and took each woman's arm to lead them out of the noisy cave.

Sleeping space had been curtained off in a few of the caves—they were not well-lit, nor especially comfortable, but they gave everyone their own space, even if this was only a pallet in a space shared with five other people. Jess and Sevens shared space with Coni, Karé, and Kaydel, when she wasn't hanging around Deeks in what passed for Medical.

Sevens led Jess to their pallet and handed her her sleeping clothes, just in case she wanted to get dressed for sleep by herself. They knelt to kiss her softly and brushed her hair back from her eyes before heading off with Karé to the bathroom.

When they returned, both thoroughly embarrassed but ready for bed, Jess was mostly dressed, and Sevens didn't have the heart to tell her her shirt was on inside out.

"You wanna sleep with us, Karé?" Jess asked, patting Sevens' arm. "That's okay, right? She could snuggle with us?"

Sevens was barely used to sleeping with one person, but they nodded, and then realized that wasn’t helpful, and touched Karé's arm to guide her closer.

"Yeah, of course. Come here," they said, and let Jess and Karé work out how they were arranging themselves before snuggling up behind Jess and putting their arm over both women.

"Good?" they asked, and Jess nodded. Karé had shifted around until she was tucked under Jess' chin, face buried against her chest.

"Yeah. Thanks," she whispered.

When Coni made it back with Kaydel, both women were drunk enough to decide that they wanted in on the cuddling, too, and Sevens awoke briefly as Coni settled on Karé's other side and Kaydel snuggled up to her back.

“So this is what passes for Girl’s Night now,” Kaydel remarked before passing out.

...

Finn couldn't sleep—didn't sleep much, anymore, because the bed felt wrong without Poe in it, and it was hard because it was on the floor, which made it feel very much like a stormtrooper bed, so he was afraid he'd have nightmares and turn into FN-2187.

Also, Rey wasn’t there, either.

He was wandering, which at least gave him the opportunity to make sure everyone was reasonably okay, or at least not alone. Since most everyone was drunk tonight, he was also checking that no one appeared to have passed out or otherwise required medical attention.

He was concerned, at first, when he walked by the room Jess' little group shared, because the first four pallets were empty. But as his eyes adjusted to the lower light levels, he realized that they were all curled up together on either Jess or Sevens' pallet, and they were all asleep. He smiled sadly and continued on, working his way toward the Wake, which seemed to be dying down.

Indeed, only Snap and Nien Nunb were left, still telling stories loudly, and it even looked like someone had moved them on to water.

"They're okay. You're doing good, son," a voice said, and Lando Calrissian clapped a hand on Finn's shoulder and smiled. "You could even get some rest occasionally."

“Maybe,” Finn said, watching until he saw Snap take a drink of water.

"Me and my people are heading out. Look for us in a week, or leave a forwarding address with Maz."

Finn whirled around. "Wait, you're _what_? Where? But—look, you should be running this, not me. I'm only a Major. You're a General, aren’t you? You can’t just _leave_."

He had assumed (hoped?) at some point Lando would take over and do the job Finn was expressly not trained to handle, and had probably managed so far only because nothing else world-shattering had occurred. But they couldn't be that lucky forever, and he couldn't do this alone, especially knowing he had no one to go to who had more experience.

"Whoa-ho!" Lando laughed, raising his arms. "Son, didn't they tell you what happens when they put me in charge of anything? Just ask my wife."

Then he grew serious. "No, look, you're fine. You're safe here, and there's no one your people trust more than you. Leia is going to wake up, and she'll be much happier knowing you were keeping her people safe and you let me stick to the scoundrel jobs."

Finn growled. He wanted to stomp his foot.

"I am not _fine_ , none of this is _fine_ , and just because they trust me doesn't mean they should. I have no idea what I'm doing!" he almost shouted, but voices echoed in this stupid, cold, wet, horrible place, so he kept his voice down. He wondered if Rey could get Lando to stay—and just where the hell _she'd_ got to, for that matter.

"Hey," Lando said, dragging Finn off into a corner. "You never are allowed to say that where anyone can hear it. That's the one lesson in leadership even I learned. Because if you don't know what to do, they lose trust in you, and then you lose _all_ of them. Finn, you've got this under control. I'll only be gone a few days—a week, tops, and you'll be resupplied and we can move to a proper base."

Lando grabbed his shoulder again. "Son, they need you—"

Finn yanked away from Lando.

"Don’t call me son!" he snarled. "They need _better_ than me. They _deserve_ better. They need a General, and one’s leaving us and the other is in a _coma_!"

Finn was sure he was going to suffocate from the sheer weight of it. This was too much, piled on everything else, and if he didn't get out of here he was going to do something he'd regret, like take a swing at Lando.

"Fine. I'll do what I can. Go—do whatever is so important," he growled, and turned on his heel to go find Rey. She and BB-8 were the only things like balance in his world right now, and they were usually together—assuming he could find them in the first place.

'Son, listen,' Lando had been about to protest, but that was apparently not appreciated, so he just watched him go.

"He'll be okay," said Maz, appearing behind Lando and making him jump. "I'll talk to him."

"I know he'll be okay," Lando said. "You sure the Hutts are going to remember the favor they owe you more than, say, that time I helped kill Jabba?"

Maz smiled. "I only said Finn would be okay."

"Thanks."

Later, Maz found Finn at the mouth of the cave, watching the forest in the moonlight.

"It's safe to go out," she offered. “A few at a time, when it’s dark.”

Finn looked over and down at Maz. "Have you seen Rey? I assume she's out there, or else she's found a cave I don't know about.”

He was still fuming just slightly, but he didn't have the energy or desire to maintain it for long. Seeing the forest and smelling the fresh nighttime air had helped clear his head enough that he thought he wouldn't immediately start an argument with the first person he spoke to. It was a good thing, too—Maz would have won that fight hands down, probably without even trying.

"Close your eyes and feel," Maz encouraged. "You don't need me to tell you that if you can find her in the Force."

The silence between them stretched, and Maz realized that Finn was still just standing there.

"What are you afraid of, Finn?"

Finn took a few seconds to answer.

"I'm afraid I won't feel Poe." Finn still only had a passive sense of the Force, and nothing felt brighter and better than Rey and Poe—feeling them together was unparalleled.

He didn’t want to know what it felt like to be missing one of them.

"Well, you'll feel him either way," she said simply, which didn't exactly make Finn feel better.

Finn closed his eyes and frowned in concentration. The Force was somewhere around here, and in it was Rey—and Poe, if he believed Maz. But Rey was close by, and he felt her first. He felt her pain, mainly: her leg still pained her, but all the pain was bleeding together.

Without waiting to see if his awareness of Poe in the Force was anything but wishful thinking and heartache, Finn gave Maz a small wave and walked out to the trees on the edge of the forest.

Rey was definitely somewhere close, but she was being almost deliberately evasive. He ended up stomping in ever increasing circles to find her, which made his mood no better than it had been earlier.

Rey had been wary and elusive since the battle, like she had regressed to her solitary scavenger self. She didn't like being around people anymore (it didn't help that she was brought down by all their sadness, too), and hated being touched.

It was absurd to Rey to think that Poe or Luke or the General held her back from that precipice—not when _Finn_ was still here.

 _Finn_. He was searching for her, lost, and she felt his pain most acutely, more than her own, which was constant. He felt responsible for Poe, as a leader and a as a lover and a friend. He felt responsible for the General...and he felt responsible for Rey.

Finn watched her training in the moonlight, under the trees. This place where she first encountered Kylo Ren. The last place she was helpless.

It reminded her of that feeling, being here. She was wallowing in it, hating it, fearing it. Feeling even more helpless. Remembering how he had _wounded_ her in their last fight.

She swung her training staff through the stances Luke had taught her, as much as she could with how stiff her leg still was, and the ones Obi-Wan had taught her, too, harnessing that fear, letting it turn to anger. She moved sharply, quick and savage lines, soft grunts, kicks and lunges on her good leg, fueled by the pain. She was beautiful.

Rey turned to face Finn when he stepped into the clearing. She had been training hard and was exhausted and sweaty, breathing heavily and leaning on one leg. They stared at each other, each wanting to ease the other's pain, but not sure how. Not sure if they were strong enough, when they couldn't deal with their own.

Finn wasn't sure what to say, so he went with something simple.

"Lando is leaving. He says he'll be back in a week." He wanted to step forward and hug her, because she looked exhausted and a little feral, like she had when he'd first met her and she didn’t want to hold his hand. But he didn't want to make everything worse by trying if she didn’t want it. "I tried to get him to stay and be in charge, but he wouldn't."

"Of course he wouldn't, you're in charge," Rey said, continuing to go through her training poses, staff spinning. It hurt to be around Finn because he was in such pain, but it probably still hurt more to be apart from him.

She had always loved Finn, and considered him a friend as soon as they stole the _Millenium Falcon_ together, but she had never been in a _relationship_ with Finn without Poe. She was still trying to feel it out. Where was that spark between them when they first met? Finn felt totally different now, like there was a hole in him that she could never fill.

_Gods, was she jealous of Poe even when he was dead?!_

On the next spin she thwacked herself in the head with her staff, pulling her hair. "OW!"

"Are you okay?" Finn asked, realizing too late this was the wrong question to ask.

"What do you think?" Rey demanded angrily, "Of course I'm not kriffing okay!"

Finn, taken aback and hurt more than truly angry (but anger was easier, it made his heart beat faster instead of wanting to stop), snarled back. "You know that's not what I meant. Stop intentionally misunderstanding me just so you can get angry."

Rey growled, hurt, but feeling justifiably so, like she had left herself open for that. She couldn't be everything for Finn, and that was the worst part about Poe being gone—and then she felt guilty for maybe not missing him more herself.

"I'm—"

But she could never explain all this to Finn, and she didn't like apologizing. So she tried again:

"Want to spar with me?"

She always felt so connected to Finn when they were sparring.

Finn considered the offer. It wasn't necessarily what he'd intended to do when he came out here. And her leg was still injured— this much was clear from the way she was standing. Dr. Kalonia had warned her, over and over, that she risked doing permanent damage to the leg if she didn’t let it heal, but the warning seemed to mean less than the demons she was out here fighting. She wouldn’t thank him for reminding her, though, not now.

Instead of finding an excuse she’d see through anyway, "Sure. Hand-to-hand?" he asked, because he didn’t have a weapon besides a blaster. And if his ulterior motive was to employ the Ewoks' “hug them into submission” tactic, well, he'd still have to catch Rey first, and she was lithe and slippery in a way he couldn't often match.

"Fine," Rey said, jabbing her staff into the ground so it stood up on its own and waiting until Finn approached to take a swing at him.

She was closed off from him in the Force, but had to open up again as he didn't miss a beat before engaging her. They synched together when they fought, and Rey could lose herself in it, where the only thing she had to think about was where his fists and feet and elbows were. Being connected to him physically was easier.

Finn met Rey's ferocity with his own, almost enjoying himself as everything else faded away and it was their breaths and their bodies. He felt strong for the first time since all of this had started. He ducked under a slightly wild swing—for a second, her weight lingered on her bad leg, and she faltered—and rushed her, slamming into her chest and taking them both to the ground.

Rey shrieked and fought back with violence that spoke of an old terror.

“Stop, don’t touch me!” she cried, and looked haunted and small and vulnerable as Finn scrambled immediately off of her. She pushed away from him, hugged her knees to her chest, and began to sob.

She knew this was _Finn_ , that he would never hurt her, but she felt—she was— _all wrong_. Old fears felt real and present. She didn’t used to like being touched. And now she didn’t like it again. Or still.

And Finn craved touch, like Poe did. Finn needed sex, too, that was part of what _a relationship_ was to him. Finn needed _Poe_ , and she wasn’t _Poe_ , and she couldn’t stop crying. This would only work with all three of them, no matter how much she loved Finn and how much he loved her.

Finn stayed motionless where he was, at first afraid he'd hurt Rey, and then confused. She was blocking him again, so he couldn't tell precisely what was wrong, only that she was uncontrollably sad and felt hopelessly broken and he didn't know how to help her because she didn't want to be touched and how else did you comfort someone? But her sobs were breaking his heart, and she felt so alone and—

"Rey, oh, Rey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, love, what's—what do you need?" he asked. _I love you, you're not alone, I'm here,_ he said, whether or not she could hear him.

Rey tried to control herself, but it was no good. "I don't know, Finn. I'm sorry. I hate this. I hate everything. I hate that—they're all gone. They left. We needed them and they left," she said, but what could Finn say to that? The silence stretched, and in it, Rey made an effort, reaching across the space between them to hook their fingers together.

That—felt better. But her body was still reacting against it uncomfortably, even if her heart wanted it.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what I need." She sniffed. "I'm glad you're here though."

Finn gave Rey's fingers a soft squeeze. He was quiet for a moment, lost in his own thoughts.

"I miss them, too," he admitted softly. Every second of every day it felt like his heart was bleeding. He kept waiting for it to finally bleed out and at least leave him numb, but it never did. He whispered, even more quietly, not wanting her to feel guilty or obligated, just a confession, "But I...I miss _you_ , too.”

He didn't know what to do with his bleeding heart except keep it closer or ignore it by working. Either way, it meant he seldom spent a full night sleeping next to Rey, because she didn’t sleep much, either, less in their bed. And there was a gaping, Poe-shaped chasm between them, throwing them off balance.

"I'm sorry," she said, once the flood of tears dried up. "I hate that I—feel this way. I can't give you—" she took a deep breath, "a lot of things you want. And the things I can give you I don't _want_ to because I would rather be out there finding Kylo Ren and plugging him full of so many holes his own mother wouldn't recognize him!"

The blaster was in inelegant weapon, and that was what he deserved. It was what all of them deserved. She wanted nothing more than to give it to them. To Ren. To every Officer in the First Order. To Snoke. She hated them!

She had staggered up, now, had let go of Finn's hand and balled her fists, and was shouting through clenched teeth. She must have looked and sounded insane. She _felt_ insane. She wasn’t turning out to be a very good Jedi without Master Luke around.

"I'm a monster," she concluded. She didn't want Finn's pity or Finn's hate for it. It was just true.

Finn shook his head.

"You're not. You're human," he told her. Sometimes he was angry too, and wanted to kill Ren with his bare hands. Other times he was so angry he couldn't do anything but find an actual punching bag and hit it until his knuckles bled and he had no tears left.

"But Rey, you gotta... You gotta come back sometimes. Please, just—just sometimes. You can still be mad and I won't touch you but you keep going where I can't follow you, and I love you. You and Sam are literally everything I have," he said from where he still sat on the ground. He reached toward the hand nearest to him, but he didn't touch it. Instead, he dropped his hand back to his lap. "I don't need anything so badly that I need it worse than I need you."

Rey took a shaky breath. And then another. And slowly got herself under control. The strength borne of desperate anger went out of her and she sat, gracelessly, as her bad leg wobbled and then buckled.

Maybe Finn did just need _her_. He didn't need Poe, he didn't need sex; he didn't need her to save the world. He didn't need her to be perfect. He just needed _her_.

And, well, Sam. She had to do better for Sam. For Finn and Sam—two humans with the same DNA, into which, probably, the same kindnesses were encoded—whom she loved.

She sniffed. "Okay," she said, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. "Okay, I—I'm here. I'm sorry."

She meant it. She reached for his hand, and held it, palm to palm.

Whenever the Dark seemed to beckon her— _Kylo Ren was once loved, and in spite of it he embraced the Dark Side_ , she reminded herself—she knew she could rely on Finn to be in the Light guiding her back.

_Kylo Ren may have been loved, but he didn't have Finn._

Finn let go of a breath he'd been holding and held on to Rey's hand like a lifeline. He even managed a shaky, sad smile.

"Hey," he said, and with his free hand dug in a pocket until he found a clean handkerchief—he'd taken to carrying around multiple of them, for himself as much as for everyone around him. He held it out to Rey. "You want to stay out here for a little while, or go inside?"

He almost wished they could just sleep out here, where it was quiet of human noise and crowded only with trees.

"I—want to stay out here," Rey decided, taking the handkerchief and making a frightful mess of it. They laughed when she blew her nose and made a great honking sound from it. She kept the handkerchief, and scooted a little closer to Finn, so that their knees touched. "How is everyone doing? How are _you_ doing?"

"Well, right now they're mostly all drunk or passed out, and tomorrow they'll all have headaches," Finn said. "But I think... Maybe we all needed this."

He shrugged, because right now there was no knowing if this would help in the long run or if they'd only temporarily blown off some steam.

"Everyone still in medical is okay—no changes." No one better, but also, no one worse. Maybe Kalonia was finally getting some rest, but somehow he doubted it. He wondered if he could convince her to let Timons, an unexpected blessing right now, take over for a night so she could actually sleep. He'd add it to his list of things to do tomorrow.

"I'm...surviving." It was the most generous way to describe what he'd been doing. If he worked hard enough, he could sometimes forget everything else and exist solely as an extension of his work, the perfect mindless, emotionless automaton the First Order had always wanted in him, but never had. "I'll keep surviving," he reassured Rey tiredly, because he would. He always would.

Rey slid in closer now, and kissed his cheek. Finn didn't move, and she wrapped her arms around him, sitting behind him and pulling him back against her chest.

"Oh, Finn," she whispered, and rested her chin on the top of his head. His hair hadn't been washed in a while, but Finn always smelled like _home_ to her.

Leia was still unconscious. Lando was leaving. BB-8 could barely move around so they stayed in one spot most of the time, and both they and R2—again—were depressed and on low-power mode a lot. 3PO was no more worried than usual, which was kind of a comfort. All the blinded pilots still didn't know what to do with themselves, and their soldier ranks were mostly in the makeshift infirmary, either in cots or helping to work it. Rey was glad Sam was with Kes. If any place in the whole galaxy was still happy, it was probably Yavin 4.

“How’s your leg?” Finn asked.

Rey shrugged and wiped away tears. “Hurts. The doctors want me off it entirely. But I snuck out, so Dr. Lan re-bandaged it and wrapped it. She says if I’m careful enough, it might heal alright.”

“You snuck out?” Finn huffed. “Must be nice being unable to be court martialed.”

Rey shrugged. “They’re too busy to be worried about me.”

Finn kissed her cheek. “I’m not.”

'Have you called Kes yet?' was the question Rey meant to ask next, but it hurt too much to think about telling Kes that his son was dead.

"We could go swimming," she said instead. Finn probably had already let him know.

Finn closed his eyes and let Rey's presence be a comfort, relaxing back against her chest, close to tears because he was just so _tired_ , and he loved her so much, and he missed loving Poe—being able to show it in quiet moments like this. He reached up to touch Rey's arms, resting his palms softly on her forearms. Rey was here. He could show her how much he loved her, at least. He'd do it however he could.

Swimming, for instance.

"Is there somewhere for swimming?" he asked, opening his eyes and drawing himself back from where he'd gone. He remembered that swimming was one of their first dates, all three of them.

"There's a pond," Rey said, smiling to remember happier swims, the lake beside the Resistance Base on D'Qar, all those months ago—Force, _a year ago_ —where a lake monster tried to eat Poe and _that_ had been the thing most to fear.

Really, she reminded herself, Poe _could_ have died then, but they had had another year with him, anyway. The time they had with him was a gift. Maybe all the time any of them had was a gift.

She stood, pulling Finn to his feet and drawing him after her. "We can get naked without...doing anything, right?"

Finn smiled softly and squeezed Rey's hand. "Of course, sweetheart. Hey," he said, and Rey looked at him. "I love you. I will _keep_ loving you. We will learn other ways of showing we love each other if prolonged touching isn't working, okay? We'll... figure this all out."

It hurt to realize they'd have to, that things would change, that they'd have to eventually get on with the simple act of living without Poe. Right now his heart wanted to hope that if he refused to find a way to move on, Poe would come back. "We'll take as long as we need, and we'll get through this, and we'll figure it out.”

Repeating it enough times would make it true.

"I will love you, too," Rey promised. "Always."

Even her fury couldn't match her boundless love. And for Poe, too—and he didn't even feel properly _gone_. Could they just pretend he was still flying a mission? That they missed him but would soon have him again?

But Rey shook herself. Finn _was_ here, and she didn't have to miss him. She found a nice sitting rock and worked her shoes off. She didn't remember when last she took off her shoes. She undressed the rest of the way and eyed the bandaging job Dr. Lan had done with some admiration—she’d used the waterproof bandages, even, as rare and precious as they were becoming— before stepping into the pool. It was cool, but the air was hot, so it felt nice. "You'll join me?"

"Yeah, just a moment," Finn answered. He sat down on the same rock Rey had used and tugged his boots off, followed by the rest of his clothes. When he put his toes in the water, he shivered.

"It's cold—how are you not freezing?" he asked her, but walked forward to join her in the deeper water. Once he got over the shock of the water temperature, it actually felt good on his sore feet and creaking knees. He sighed and admitted, "Okay, I guess it isn't so bad.”

Rey smiled, perhaps eased back into closeness by Finn's vulnerability, and she swam a little closer to him. The moonlight dappled over his skin, illuminating him in spots where he would otherwise almost disappear against the dark water. She nosed in, kissing his chin, and then his cheek, and finally his lips.

He tasted mainly of tears.

And because he was going to keep his hands to himself unless she did something, she took his hands in hers and stepped on his feet.

"Only my feet are cold," she admitted with a small huff.

Finn wiggled his toes a little under Rey's feet and smiled. He liked this, being this close, just being together for what felt like the first time in many weeks. Time had a strange way of stretching and shrinking, lately.

"I..." but he didn't know where he was going with that. "I love you. I miss this. Miss _you_ ," he told her, repeating what he'd already said earlier. It was important she knew.

Rey nodded, leaning in and resting her head on his shoulder. "I miss you, too." _I'm sorry I get so scared, and angry._ Then she winced. Waterproof or not, the cold water was doing her leg no favors at the moment. "Ugh, and I keep walking on my leg wrong. Don’t tell Dr. Kalonia I said that," she grumbled. She shouldn't be walking on it at all, of course, certainly not _training_ on it, but the First Order wasn't going to wait. Snoke wasn't going to wait. She knew it, and whether or not Dr. Kalonia _liked_ it, she knew it too. It was probably one of the only reasons she hadn’t tied Rey to a bed—that, and the lack of beds to tie her to.

But neither was the First Order here right now. Finn was here. She kissed his shoulder and leaned against him, let him support her.

"I'm here for you," she said after a minute. "You're supporting everyone, including me. And I should be supporting you, too."

"We can support each other," Finn agreed, curling his arms loosely around her waist—not trapping her, but stabilizing her. "I would suggest you go easy on your leg, but to be fair, I wouldn't listen if the situation were reversed." He took a deep breath and then exhaled a long sigh, feeling the knots in his back stretch, though very few of them actually relaxed.

"Maz brought out some truly horrible alcohol tonight. Paint thinner, really," he commented.

"All alcohol is horrible," Rey said, "unless it's hiding in juice."

She curled up to Finn's chest, let his arms wind around her, and she held onto his waist. How had she not wanted this before?

"The problem is," she began with a sudden sigh. "I can't feel that they're _dead_. Poe and Luke. They're just...not right here now."

Finn thought about this, humming softly.

"Would you...is that just what it—death—feels like?" he finally asked, tripping over the question he didn't really want to ask. He hugged Rey and moved a hand to her hair, petting it softly. "Could you talk to Maz?"

She was the only Force expert they had now, unless Obi-Wan's ghost wanted to take up the slack.

Rey sighed. "I could. Once I decide that not knowing is better than knowing."

She leaned up and kissed Finn's cheek, and then cupped his face in her hands to kiss his forehead. "Thank you, my friend and my love. Thank you.”

...

Consciousness was a blurred mess of— _well, not a blur, of course, you’re blind, remember?_ —pain and shouting and pain and medical droids and pain… He went in and out like a bad comlink signal, with no idea where he was or how much time had passed.

“He’s flatlining again!”

“Lung is collapsing—“

“Prep him for surgery—“

“—important prisoner—“

“Oh, what a mess…”

“—just not equipped to do that here—“

“I need him alive, Major!”

“With all due respect, sir, I wasn’t the one who cut his _arm_ off!”

Poe could only really tell how bad off he was when he heard droids communicating in Binary that he couldn’t follow. Then he was out again.


	2. Chapter 2

When Poe woke clearly for the first time—he did not feel clear. Things were slow and sluggish and— _bad, it’s bad, you’re dying, you’re not going to survive this_ —he didn’t know where he was, he couldn’t see, he just wanted to go home. He felt sick, and somehow empty. Like his insides had been scooped out of him and were in jars somewhere waiting for the rest of him to die.

He ran through a physical diagnostic as well as he could without sight. He felt like he was probably strapped to a table. Kind of funny they thought he could escape like this. Machines (or droids) were beeping around him ( _I can’t understand Binary anymore, have I had a stroke?!_ ). There were needles in him— _kriff fuck not the interrogation droid again_ —but they were probably the medical kind. There was a mask on his face helping ( _making_ ?) him breathe. His left side hurt like hell, which was maybe a step up from numb, only because now he knew he still _had_ a left leg and—well. _Don’t think about that._

“Another dose of epinephrine,” said a voice.

“Sir, he might—”

“I know the risks. I need him awake.”

“Oh. I know that voice,” Poe managed, coughing wetly. Super. That’s definitely bloody-tasting. Also missing a few teeth. Classy. “Hux, right?”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Commander Dameron. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions.”

“My name is Poe Dameron, Commander, my service number is 19-315-728, and for the rest, you can go fuck yourself.”

The Hux asshole laughed. “My medics assure me you wouldn’t survive any strenuous interrogation—to be frank, they tell me you won’t survive another forty-eight hours, regardless of what we do with you—so this is only a friendly chat.”

Poe didn’t answer. It made him nervous—more nervous than bleeding out on a table in front of your mortal enemy did, anyway—to not be able to see him.

“The Resistance is no more, Commander Dameron. You’re nothing but a deserter of the Republic Navy, now.”

“You know, that sucks, I had a lot of accumulated vacation time…”

“How does it feel to be a traitor? A terrorist?”

“Look, fuck you, pal,” Poe let himself be goaded into saying. “The Resistance is not going to stop. We took down your kriffing Starkiller, and we keep getting stormtroopers on _our_ side—“

“Our reports said that you, Commander, were the one who fired the killing blow, destroying our oscillator, destroying an entire planet full of our people—“

“Yeah, I’d do it again,” Poe growled. “So you better kill me or let me die or whatever you’re gonna do because I’m _never_ going to stop coming after you, the Resistance is never going to stop until you’re wiped off the face of the galaxy. Finn is coming for you, and Rey is coming for you, you fascist Empire-loving shitheads—”

“All right, cut the feed,” Hux snapped, no longer speaking to Poe. “We’ve got what we need.”

...That was a weird thing to say.

“Um,” Poe said.

“Freeze him now. We might need him later, and we don’t want him dying on us in the meantime.”

“Whoa—what? _What_?!”

The last thing Poe remembered was being cold.

Very, _very_ cold.

...

Another few weeks had gone by in the Resistance with no significant changes. Admiral Statura was on his feet, but he was an engineer, not a leader, so he and Finn took joint command of the Resistance.

"Anyway, I only have command of a few dozen blind pilots and a paltry number of starships," he told Finn sheepishly. "So I'm pretty sure you should retain command, anyway."

But things were beginning to look more like a base, even if it was small, and cramped, and hidden in caves. Rey was still on her feet, with only a slight limp that Dr. Kalonia said would go away if she would only _rest_ , but fat chance of that happening. They had real food, now. The techs were re-building their fleet. Intelligence officers had gone into Maz's pirate cantina and put a few feelers out, and sure enough, new recruits joined each day, some of them bringing guns and ships with them—because, well, pirates.

Finn was contemplating where the Resistance could move to safely, the caves as relatively quiet as they ever were, when he heard a shout from the barracks.

"I CAN SEE! I CAN SEE! SEVENS! FINN? FINN, WHERE'S MAJOR FINN!"

"Oh gods, me, too!"

"Wait, wait—it's blurry!"

"Dr. Kalonia!"

"Medic! We need a medic!"

Finn had his blaster out of its holster and raised to fire before the words being yelled through the caves made it through his head, as well as the loudest voice shouting them. Jessika Pava could create one hell of a racket for such a tiny woman...

He nearly crashed into Kalonia as he entered the cave where the pilots had all gathered. She was trying to restore some order to the room, but not having a lot of luck. Pilots, especially happy pilots, were loud and rambunctious.

Since Statura wasn't there yet, Finn put a hand on a very frustrated Kalonia's shoulder and then took a deep breath.

“WE HEAR YOU!" he shouted, and after a few moments of chatter, the room quieted down. The pilots were all looking at him—and not the way they had been looking through everything since they'd been blinded. They were _seeing_ him. Statura finally arrived, out of breath, and it took him a moment to realize the pilots were looking at him, too.

"They say they can see," Finn told him as Kalonia started moving through their ranks.

"Is there anyone who has not regained any vision at all?" she finally asked from the middle of the room.

A few hands raised.

"Okay, don’t worry. I want an orderly line," Dr. Kalonia instructed, and the now-sighted pilots would have agreed to anything, and scrambled into place more or less by rank.

The exams were promising, as a few of them had blurred vision that she still hoped would right itself, and she gave them each exercises to strengthen their eyes. The few who hadn’t regained their sight yet were hopeful that they soon would.

"It looks good," she said. "I can let everyone who can see, minus Wexley and Kun, back on light duties."

She frowned a little, still worried about those two.

"Do we have any starships we can let them work with? Any sims? You're all still grounded," she said firmly, but the pilots were so happy to have their eyes back that they were only too happy to obey doctor's orders.

Statura nodded. "We have plenty for them to do," he said, to grins all around—mostly.

Finn noted that Karé and Snap were just staring at their hands in their laps. Karé didn't even react when Jess sat down next to her and took her hands. Snap just heaved a sigh and gave his friends a brave smile when they jostled him encouragingly by the shoulder. Bastian, one of the ones who still couldn’t see, also looked morose.

"They'll be alright. I think they got the worst of it," Kalonia said quietly to Finn. "I worry about Karé," she added hesitantly.

Finn nodded—he was too, although he was glad to see Jess and, after a moment, Sevens, talking softly to her. Jess pulled her into a hug, and Sevens leaned over and held both of them. "It'll take time, like anything else. I don't have to tell you," Kalonia said.

"Sir, sir!" Connix cried, sprinting into the medical quarters.

"Kaydel! I can—"

"Not now, Deeks," she snapped. "Major Finn, we have inbound. A dozen ships or more, sir, unmarked. Not responding to our hails—"

"Lieutenant! We have contact!" came a correction from the Command quarters, and now everyone—including a few of the pilots who slipped past Kalonia's defenses—was running to Command, some of them straight out to the mouth of the cave.

Finn ran to Command and nodded to Teena, who'd made contact with the ships, to put him through.

"Aw, you missed us! Looks like you could use some ships," a voice crackled over the comms, and Finn shook his head.

"You’re late," Finn said, trying not to sound as relieved as he felt.

"Son, who do you think pointed all those new recruits towards Takodana?" Lando asked, laughing, like this wasn’t a problem. "Where would you like us to land these birds?"

Finn took a deep, calming breath—Lando was helping, after all, even if he was being obnoxious about it. He directed them to land the ships as near to the mouth of the cave as possible.

"Mind coming to meet us? I see your pilots out here, but you'll need to know what's working and what isn't." Because apparently, not content with merely escaping to Command, some pilots had gone a step further and escaped outdoors when they heard that there were ships incoming.

"I'll send Statura, he knows more about the ships than I do," Finn responded.

Lando was quiet for a moment and Finn heard a big ship landing outside.

"Send Rey, too. I think she'll want to help. Some of these could use some improvements," Lando added.

Finn turned to go, but practically tripped on Rey, who'd shown up without his noticing and was standing right behind him.

"Come on, there's something—I don't know what it is, but the Force wants me out there," she told him, eyes wide and almost manic, looking more excited than he’d seen her recently, and then she practically dragged him out to where Lando was descending down the ramp of the ship he'd just landed.

"What—" Rey started, and then she stopped talking and went absolutely still, right in the middle of a stride, like a predator about to pounce on something.

They were stunned as a flood of personnel disembarked Lando's yacht—many of them bearing supplies—Connix nearly burst into tears at the sight—and last of all, Lando himself, standing with his hands on his hips and cape flapping majestically in the breeze. He waved as Finn and Rey appeared, and then turned and stepped aside to allow two final figures to disembark. Rey still didn’t move, not even when one of the personnel bumped her arm, and Finn raised his eyebrows at her in question.

And as suddenly as she’d frozen, she snapped her attention to the top of the ramp and straightened in disbelief.

"Luke!" Rey cried, and sprang into motion, leaving Finn's side to sprint across the grass straight at her Master, hardly giving thought to the man he walked arm in arm with as if with an old friend. Finn remembered the other man was Wedge Antilles, but Rey hardly looked at him as she tore Luke from his arms and nearly tackled him to the ground.

"You're back, you came back," she sobbed, torn between hitting him and hugging him and if _he_ was alive it gave her hope for Poe, too, and by the time Finn ran up to them she was a complete mess.

This was...not precisely the welcome Luke had expected, sitting on the floor with an armful of sobbing Padawan, her equally emotional betrothed standing over them and looking like he might sob, too, their third party oddly absent.

"Rey, shhh, I'm sorry. _Ow_ ," he said as Rey landed one final blow right to his ribs.

"You _left_ ," Rey said, and sat back on her heels.

Luke looked at her, as thin as he'd ever known her, sitting with her weight resting on one leg as if the other hurt. Finn, too, appeared to have aged many years.

“Where’s…?”

When Luke raised his eyebrows at the young man and glanced toward the starships, Finn shook his head.

"I'm so sorry," Luke said to both of them, and Rey wove to her feet so she could reach down and help him stand.

"I couldn't tell if you were—if—" Rey stammered. "I couldn't find you. Anywhere."

"The same way she can't find Poe," Finn added softly.

Luke looked from one to the other, and then put one hand on each of their shoulders, as if he could give them strength.

"Anyway," Rey blinked wetly. "How did you—what happened? Master Luke, we thought you _died_."

Luke squeezed her hand. "I thought I was going to. But, uh, we might discuss this in private. Have you met Wedge?"

" _Finally_ , Luke," Wedge said, sounding annoyed. "Anyway, we met. She yelled at me."

"You probably deserved it," Luke said pleasantly, and in spite of seeming angry, Wedge gave Luke a steadying arm. Rey concluded Wedge just had something of a 'resting bitch face.'

"I do have something to show you, Rey. Something important," Luke went on. "Where can we..." He straightened up and looked around, suddenly. "Where's Leia?"

"She's in medical—she's stable, she just hasn't woken up yet. Brance was trying to shoot me—he was our mole, he tried to take over—and she jumped in the way. I couldn’t stop her. I'm sorry," Finn said, and he looked so miserable that Luke stepped forward and hugged him.

"Don't be sorry. It was her choice to make. You know, we old rebels don't bounce back quite as quickly as you kids. It takes longer for us to heal, is all," he said, and nodded to Wedge. "If you all would be so good as to help these ruffians sort out fixing the ships, I will go see my sister, and then come find you."

Finn, relieved to have someone else telling him what to do, nodded and turned to Wedge, while Rey and Statura turned to Lando.

"So...sorry I yelled at you," Rey told Wedge Antilles, first.

"It's all right," Wedge said with a sigh. He seemed like kind of a downer, and Rey wondered how he could be such good friends with Luke, who was a ray of sunshine.

"It's not the fleet you had before," Lando told Admiral Statura. "A few of them barely fly."

"But it's something," Statura said. "Thank you. The pilots are just getting their sight back. We'll get them and our techs working on everything right away."

...

Luke met Dr. Kalonia in the infirmary, and she startled visibly at the sight of him.

"Master Skywalker!" she cried, and then recovered. "Back from the dead?"

"Something like that," he said with a shy smile. "How's my sister?"

Dr. Kalonia's mouth thinned into a frown. "Follow me."

In a back room Leia Organa lay pale and unmoving. She looked almost young again, and like she could be sleeping, dressed in white and hooked up to various jury-rigged medical contraptions.

"Does she—" Luke began, mouth dry. "Would better facilities help?"

"It would make our job easier, but it wouldn't help her situation. It was a severe trauma she went through, but her brain activity is normal. She's just...sleeping." She turned to Luke. "Is it...something to do with the Force?"

Luke gazed at his sleeping sister for several long moments and then shrugged.

"It could be she’s healing herself—or it could be her body's way of taking a much-needed vacation. We both know how she hates those..." Luke said. He went to a chair that had been brought in from somewhere (and smelled like old alcohol and smoke, so probably it was from Maz) and sat down.

"If Finn and Rey come looking for me, please let me know. It was a long trip," he said, and Kalonia smiled softly in understanding.

"And you need some quiet. I will be sure to come get you if they come looking," she assured him. When she left, she closed the door softly behind her, and Luke let out a long sigh before reaching up and gently holding one of Leia's hands.

...

"Master Luke?" Rey whispered softly, and stuck her head in, Finn right behind her, to find Luke passed out asleep across his sister's lap.

"Luke," she said again, and touched his shoulder.

Luke stirred.

"Oh, hi. I was having a lovely dream. Leia was yelling at me about...stuff. Probably that I'm sleeping." He smiled dopily up at Rey and Finn. "Come in, sit down. I don't think we'll wake her," he said with a wry chuckle. "Unless you'd rather go somewhere else?"

Finn and Rey both went back out to find chairs and pulled them into the room, making it a little crowded but a lot less depressingly quiet and still. Luke yawned and scrubbed his hand through his hair.

"Before we actually talk, are you both...as alright as you can be?" he asked.

Finn shrugged one shoulder. "I try not to think about it.”

"And I train a lot," Rey added.

"And clearly, you've both been missing meals, so we could go with ‘no, not really,’" Luke concluded.

It was hard to grieve when there was a war on, Luke knew, staring at these grim-faced children, who lost a loved one so dear, and too young. _Too young_.  He had had years of happiness with Mara Jade, and years of solitude after her death to grieve. This was more like—like losing Obi-Wan or Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru had been: no time to mourn, because he had to fight for his life.

They would heal in time.

"I can show you how to, ah—commune with him. Even those without Force Sensitivity are _part_ of the Force, and can still be found and felt in it.” Finn met his eyes for a split second, either in hope or heartache…or perhaps both. There was an edge to that gaze that hadn’t been there before, as of one too worn to cry and too worn to stop it. He was riding out this storm, nothing more or less.

“So don't despair," Luke said, though Finn had dropped his gaze to his lap, silent tears falling to hit his knees. Luke sniffed as Finn took a deep breath and regained his composure.

"Ah, so. What I wanted you to see, Rey, were these," Luke said, revealing, wrapped in dark cloth, two lightsabers.

“When the tower collapsed, the Knights of Ren were killed, and I was knocked unconscious and trapped—Kylo Ren was trapped, too, otherwise we might have fought to the death down there. But the First Order got him out pretty quickly, and after they were gone I escaped myself, rigged a comlink on the battlefield and sent up an SOS. Wedge Antilles, of all people..." he said, his smile genuinely pleased.

"We left you..." Rey said, ignoring the lightsabers. "I'm so sorry. If Wedge—"

Luke held up a hand to stop her.

"You did what you had to, and you survived, which is all I could ever ask for," he told her. And then he grinned. "Besides, Wedge likes being a hero. Don't let him fool you—he's only a curmudgeon about 70% of the time. You know, he used to fly TIEs, back in a previous life."

Finn looked surprised, but he said nothing. Rey blinked, then shook her head.

"Could I ask why I couldn't feel you?" she asked, not even sure what sort of an answer she hoped for.

Luke took her hand. "Distance, sometimes," he said. "It's why Leia couldn't find me using the Force. And—well— _grief_ can mess up your sense of the Force pretty badly," he told her, gently. "It's the only good reason I can think of for the Jedi's issue with emotions and attachments."

"...Oh," Rey said. "That answers a lot."

If Poe _was_ still alive out there, and it was increasingly becoming a long shot, she wouldn't be able to sense him because she was too sad and scared he might really be dead to feel him if he were.

Luke looked on the verge of saying something, but decided against it for now. "We should meditate together. Sometime."

"Yeah. I guess we should."


	3. Chapter 3

For the next few days, Luke continued watching his sister sleep.

Which sounded creepy, if he thought about it like that. He took her hand and smiled softly.

"This is really going a bit far just to teach me a lesson," he hummed. There was nothing to indicate that Leia heard him, even though her heartbeat was strong and she breathed on her own. She really did look to be asleep. "I didn't mean to worry you, or abandon you. Again..."

He had to quit doing that, or they were going to start holding it against him. He sighed and rested his head on her bed, still tired.

"Wedge found me. He's here, with Lando. They helped evacuate the base to Maz's cave. Finn, though, apparently led the effort. Lando says he’s is doing well, given the circumstances. I worry for him, and for Rey. I think they could use your guidance," he told Leia, his voice becoming sleepy. It had been such a long journey home, and he was not as young as he'd once been.

"I've been _shot_. What's your excuse?" startled Luke from a doze to full wakefulness.

"Leia?!" he cried, and rubbed his eyes. But he was awake and so was she, blinking at him, clear-eyed and annoyed.

"There's still a war on, still, isn't there?" she demanded. "Why are you sleeping? Where are we? Where's Finn?"

Luke gaped in astonishment before reaching across Leia and pressing her shoulders back to the bed as she tried to sit up.

"First of all, stop that!" he scolded. "Finn and Rey are eating, which they haven’t done in a while. There is still a war on. My excuse is that I was buried under a tower, escaped, and had to rig a downed starship to transmit an SOS, which was answered by Wedge and Lando. So my excuse is that I'm...very tired. You’ve been sleeping for a month!"

Luke smiled at her, though she was blinking at him in confusion.

"I'm glad to see you," he told her. He was glad she hadn't felt the despair of losing her twin to this fight, they way others had lost so much.

Leia winced, and then grunted, as if it all came back to her. "That's right, I heard that report. You had gone down— _Luke_ ," she gasped, flopping back to the bed, worried mostly about her hair, of all things. "How are my pilots? And Rey, Rey was hurt. Did we get Brance? Where's Finn—Harter!" she cried gratefully as the Doctor entered.

"Thank the Force you’re awake," Dr. Kalonia gasped.

"The Force had nothing to do with it, Major, get me out of this bed or get me my command team!"

"General Organa— _Leia_ , stop that this instant or you'll get nothing but peace and quiet until I'm satisfied you're not going to undo all the work your body has been doing," Kalonia scolded, and Leia at least looked chastened for the several minutes it took Kalonia to check her vital signs.

Luke chuckled, amused, until Kalonia rounded on him. "And if you think _you're_ going to waltz in here back from the dead without being checked over, you are incorrect.”

Once she had cleared him as well and threatened Leia a few more times, she gave permission for three visitors for two hours, and would not be convinced to allow more.

"Give me three names of people who aren't dead," Leia demanded, frank, but not sure she could cope if she asked to see someone who was dead.

Dr. Kalonia pursed her lips. "Major Finn, Rey, General Calrissian."

Leia's heart thudded painfully. It was possible the names were random, but it was also possible—

"Where is Commander Dameron?" So much for protecting herself.

Dr. Kalonia left Luke to deal with that.

Luke shook his head softly. "I'm sorry, Leia. They had a weapon that blinded all the pilots—not permanently, they’ve recovered—and, you know Poe.”

“Like his mother,” she said, sounding a little dead inside.

“He insisted on covering the retreat because between him and BB-8, they could fly blind…" He shrugged uneasily. "He didn’t come back. Rey and Finn went back with Lando and the _Falcon_ to find us, but they only found BB-8 and some pieces of Poe’s ship. Lando said it looked like Poe slammed _Black One_ into the command center of one of the Destroyers."

He shook his head and looked down at his hands where they lay in his lap, his throat tight with emotion. There was nothing he could add. Saying Poe had died a hero's death felt empty when, at the end of the day, he was dead whether or not he'd died heroically. It was a hollow comfort, at best.

Leia's mouth thinned. _What was the universe going to take from her next? What was left?_

She closed her eyes, committing Poe and the rest of her pilots, soldiers, and command staff to her ancestors, and when she blinked them open, her face was hard.

"Get Major Finn, Rey, and—Lieutenant Connix in here, please," she said, and then winced. "Tell me Connix is okay."

Luke nodded, patting her hand, and said something to someone outside.

"Also—" Leia said in a low growl when Luke returned his attention to her, "why am I wearing an adult diaper? _How_ long have I been unconscious?"

"Long enough to hit menopause?" Luke tried.

Leia snatched a cup of water from the table nearby and threw it at him. "Get me some water."

"Yeesh, _okay_ , princess."

"Don't _call_ me that!"

...

Rey, Finn, and Connix arrived in a boisterous heap that made Luke smile and Leia glare sternly until they got themselves into something resembling an order, at which point she could stand it no longer, and smiled at them, too.

Finn, who'd been holding together so well today, relatively, promptly dissolved into an actual sob, which he was just as quick to recover from and apologize for. Once he'd pulled himself back together, he sighed. He was running out of feelings to have at a very rapid pace.

"Finn. It's alright. I hear you've been holding us together—with a little help, of course," Leia said kindly, and Finn shrugged one shoulder.

"He has, General," Connix said quickly, and Rey nodded in agreement, taking Finn's hand when he held his breath to try to stop himself crying again.

"Come here, Finn," she said, gently, and took his hand. "Connix, report. How are we?"

Kaydel cleared her throat. "Uh. We _were_ down about 40% across the board—personnel, supplies, ships. General Calrissian's additions bring us almost up to where we were before, maybe 90%. We, ah, don't have anyone in charge of Infantry division, and I recommend we promote Major Finn officially..."

"I'll take it under advisement. Thank you, lieutenant. You're due a promotion, too, I think." While Connix spoke, Leia didn't take her eyes off Finn.

"How are we doing, Major?" she asked, and she didn't mean the Resistance.

Finn shrugged.

"We're all tired, and everyone lost someone," he answered, speaking half for himself and half for the people of the Resistance. "But we're...we're surviving, hours and days at a time."

He struggled to offer her a reassuring smile, but only got maybe halfway there. "The past few days have been better," he added. Pilots getting their vision back, Lando showing up with ships and supplies, and with Luke, and their General finally waking up. He should have been overjoyed, but he still only felt overwhelmed. None of it brought back what he most wanted—and he felt guilty for not being happier.

He blinked and caught Leia still watching him, as if she had some idea of what he was thinking. His voice was caught in his throat. If he tried to speak, to explain, to answer her question the way she'd actually wanted—he couldn’t. He was all out of the energy required to fight his emotions back down afterward, until no one needed Major Finn, temporary leader of the Resistance, anymore.

Leia only squeezed his hand and let him be. She turned to Rey. "You looking after him?" she asked, intending it to be a joke, but then _Rey_ looked haunted, and then defensive, and she put a hand on Finn's shoulder.

"I'm trying," she said.

Leia looked between them, and then stared pointedly at Luke, as if to say, 'Take care of them, or I will blame you.' He nodded, and then she sighed, breaking the thick mood.

"Okay," she said. "Connix, Finn, what's the plan?"

"We were looking for an alternative base location, ma'am. Things are getting rough out there. We've started hearing..." she shifted uneasily. "That the Republic's aid—minimal though it is—to us has been outed. And we're losing popular favor."

"Force help us," Leia groaned.

"Not that anyone likes the First Order, either, you know. But. They think we're only making the conflict worse. You know. By resisting, um, the spread of bald-faced fascism?" Connix shook her head. "Anyway, people are getting more polarized. Part of the reason Calrissian is finally with us, if I may speak candidly. So we're looking for a new base. It'll be a lot easier to move now that we have pilots who can see, so that's good news."

"When can we be ready to move?" Leia asked.

"We never really unpacked, here. If we just rearrange the cargo brought by General Calrissian, I think we can leave sooner, rather than later. It could easily be done in a day, if the starships are flyable." She looked to Finn for confirmation of this.

"The ships should all be flight-capable, but they're not battle-ready. Neither, really, are our pilots. Kalonia hasn't cleared all of them to fly, either," Finn answered. But there were probably ways around that, even if Kalonia didn't particularly like it.

"Give them a day," Dr. Kalonia said, from the door. "Twenty-four hours. The return of their sight may not be permanent, and no one wants a second round of blind pilots," she said grimly, and Leia nodded.

"Okay, we leave in twenty-four hours. I need to go before the Senate and see what the hell is going—"

"Uh, General," Dr. Kalonia said, sounding amused. " _You're_ not doing anything. I need you in that bed for at least a week, resting, and if I have to implement visiting hours, I will."

Rey, Finn, and Connix had never seen such a glare.

"I'll have you flogged," Leia menaced.

Dr. Kalonia just laughed.


	4. Chapter 4

"Leia..."

Dr. Kalonia’s voice sounded wearied, even though she was getting better rest these days. Or, she would be, if Leia could just stay off her feet...

"Harter. I have a job to do."

"Which you can do from the chair..."

It was the third day of this argument, and a week since General Organa had returned to the Conn, amid applause and cheers. Things were beginning to look up, despite darkening clouds outside.

"I can't comm senators from a hoverchair, doctor!" Leia complained. "We keep losing donors and I'm worried the Order keeps gaining them. With all the chaos happening, people will take order at any price."

"Leia, you could send—"

"Shut up, Luke, you're too nice for politics," Leia snapped.

Han could have done this. Poe could have, too.

"Lando," she muttered to herself. "I'll have Calrissian do it. He's aged better."

"Madam, how dare you; _you_ are ageless," Lando protested. "But I will make communications for you until I am blue in the face."

"Fine." The Senate barely liked her any more, anyway, even the New New Republic Senate, or whatever they were on now. How many Senates had been destroyed or disbanded in her lifetime?

"Then I'll use the chair," she said. "Finn. Rey. Walk with me."

She maneuvered herself out of the infirmary and into their new Command Center, now firmly established on one of the moons of Bothawui. It was better than the caves of Takodana had been, anyway.

"Our objectives: Find the First Order. Destroy the First Order. We threw everything we had at them on Dantooine, and they responded in kind. If that really was everything, we _can take them_. It is possible. But how do we get there?" she turned to Finn, mostly, though cast an eye over Rey, too.

Finn had no more idea than the General did about how to find and destroy the First Order. He'd been planning on a wedding after Dantooine, not a war. But this was to be their new normal, it seemed.

"We need to know what they have left. We know what we took out on Dantooine, but we need to compare it to what we know they had." Timons would help with this, since she had given them the information in the first place.

"We know now that they wanted us to attack Dantooine. Our intelligence was precisely what they wanted it to be." Though the First Order hadn’t expected them to know so much about their numbers, so they probably still had that going for them, as well as knowing the identities of several senators who were betraying the Senate and being paid by the First Order. “But that leak is plugged.”

Finn sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose like it might help him think. "We get some of our new recruits—the pirates—to gather intel about Snoke's whereabouts."

“Rey and I might be able to help with that, too,” Luke said, and he and Rey exchanged a look that left Finn briefly baffled.

"Good point on intel, Major," Leia said, coaching him. "But you were there. Give me an estimate. If they threw everything they had at us on Dantooine, what do they have left?"

Finn did some tallying in his head. If that had really been everything they'd had, the First Order was probably down to just over half strength, though no telling how they had been resupplied in the interim. And at least one Star Destroyer had been taken down entirely, while the _Finalizer_ was likely still out of commission. He told Leia as much, though he added that it was probably a best case scenario. "And we don't know, of course, how much of their leadership we took out. All we really know is that Ren survived.”

Leia's mouth thinned briefly, and then she nodded.

They were surprised when Lando ran up to them, huffing, with Connix behind him. "Leia! General, you're gonna want to see this."

"Lando, you're supposed to be on your way to Coruscant!" she complained.

"I think it may be changing what I'm doing," he said gravely, and Connix nodded.

Finn and Rey looked uncertainly to each other.

Connix put her hand on Finn’s arm. "You’ll want to see this, too."

Something about the way Connix said that had Rey crowding a little closer to Finn—she wasn't sure whether it was to support him or be supported against whatever it was they wanted her to see.

But when they reached the Command Center, Snap's big burly form was there, letting Leia and Connix back through but crowding Rey and Finn back out.

"Rey! Finn! Guys, you do not want to see this, you should—"

"Let me through!" Rey snapped, fist pulling back before Leia barked:

"Let them through."

It was General Hux's face that greeted them.

They didn’t know what they were expecting, but it wasn’t that.

Rey felt her blood boil instantly at the sight of his face, her cheeks going hot with rage. The earth under her might even have been trembling, but everyone was too focused on the projection to notice.

Finn’s fury went cold, however, as Hux delivered an impassioned speech about terrorists in the Resistance, calling them a renegade band of malcontents that wanted to see the New Republic fall. He accused General Organa of treason and demanded that the Republic see to the Resistance’s disarmament—however they had to—immediately.

(“It’s being broadcast across the galaxy. It’s about four hours old, ma’am, it just reached us,” Teena reported.)

Kylo Ren's face showed briefly in the background as Hux told the camera about how General Organa, power-hungry and utterly ruthless, had attempted to kill her own son when he had joined the First Order to put a stop to her scheming.

If Leia felt any emotion at this, it didn’t show on her face.

In return for the disarmament of the Resistance, the First Order would, of course, likewise disarm, as they had only ever been acting in the interest of the Republic, _apparently_.

Rey and Finn were both shaking with barely contained rage, but Hux wasn't quite finished.

Hux's sneering face, like in the hologram on the cloning facility, was impossible to look away from, and Rey felt actually ill, remembering that horrible day, just like this one, when he continued:

"As a show of good faith, the First Order is prepared to release this terrorist into the custody of the Republic: a suicide pilot who has been shown every care by our doctors and has admitted to destroying the Hosnian system."

Now the picture changed, and as the image focused—

“Poe Dameron!” Finn cried, pushing past everyone to get as close to the holoprojection as he could. Poe was strapped to a steel surgery table, looking—barely recognizable.

The sound cut in, Finn felt, very strategically on Poe saying, “…We keep getting stormtroopers on our side—“

And then Hux’s voice cut him off again, sounding sort of canned:

“Our reports said that you, Commander, were the one who fired the killing blow, destroying the Hosnian system, killing five planets worth of people—“

“Yeah, and I’d do it again,” Poe said, and the camera zoomed in on his face. The left side was a bloody mess, and his breathing sounded wrong. His eyes unfocused, his voice kind of manic, and to anyone who didn’t know him enough to realize he was _scared_ , he might have looked quite mad with revolutionary zeal. “So you better kill me or let me die or whatever you’re gonna do because I’m never going to stop coming after you, the Resistance is never going to stop until you’re wiped off the face of the galaxy—”

Hux’s face came on the screen again, next to a small picture that Finn and Rey realized was _a block of carbonite with Poe in it._

“We have the terrorist Poe Dameron in our custody. We are prepared to give him up to the Republic to stand trial when the Resistance disarms and the following traitors have also given themselves up to the Republic to answer for their war crimes.”

A list flashed across the screen with most of their names on it, starting with Rey, Leia Organa, and followed closely by “FN-2187” and most of the rest of the Resistance command staff.

"Finn," Rey gasped. "What happened to his _hand_?"

 _Poe. Poe is alive._ It was all Finn could think about. Poe was in the hands of the First Order. They must have tricked Poe into saying what they wanted. _Poe is alive. They have Poe._

If only they had returned to Dantooine faster, they might have seen him, or saved him, Finn couldn’t stop thinking. Or if they had stayed longer, if they hadn’t jumped out before him—

_Poe is alive._

"Finn!" Rey shook him, and Finn wondered how many times she'd said his name to snap him out of it.

_Poe is alive._

"I—his hand?" he asked her. He'd been so focused on the fact that he was _alive_ that he hasn't even noticed. That seemed kind of insignificant, but they were already replaying the holo again, with no sound. Finn watched it, mesmerized.

"His _hand,_ Finn, it’s _gone_!" Rey practically wailed at him, frustrated and upset. “He looks half-dead, Finn!”

_Poe is alive!_

But they needed to find him. They needed to know where he was. Rey—Rey could find him. He knew she could.

"Rey, he's alive. Poe's alive," Finn whispered.

"Yes! Finn!" Rey shrieked.

Finn had grabbed her arms, and she had grabbed his jacket, shaking him. "Finn, that means we have to go _get_ him. We have to figure out where he is!"

The whole Command Center was in chaos, with various pilots pledging to lead the charge into the heart of the First Order to get their Commander back; others were worried about the bounties on their heads, and worried how the Republic was going to respond to this—how their _families_ would respond.

"People!" Leia shouted, but she was too small in the hoverchair, and she couldn't get her voice loud enough.

Connix, seeing this, whistled so loud it nearly broke the sound barrier.

"Everybody shut the hell up and listen to the General!"

"People," Leia said when the room went quiet. "Our objective has not changed. Our place in the galaxy has not changed. This is a bluff, and we're calling it. As you were. New orders will be forthcoming. I want Statura, Finn, Luke, Rey, Calrissian, and Pava in my office. If anyone tries to be a hero without direct orders from me, I’ll shoot you myself, understood?"

...

There had never been such a rush to pack into Leia's office. They went silent as soon as the door shut, and Leia paused for a moment, as if to gather her thoughts.

"Lando, I still need you to go to the Senate. If anyone can talk our way out of this political shitstorm, it's you."

"So basically what you're saying is..." Lando began, with a grin.

Leia stared at him.

"I'm not saying it."

"Aw come on, General!"

"I'm sorry, did I just say something nice about you? I take it back."

"I'm wounded, Princess," Lando teased, one hand over his heart. Finn was reminded so much of Poe that he actually caught his breath. Leia rolled her eyes.

" _You_ are wasting precious time and energy, and no one thinks you're funny," she told him dryly. They stared at each other for several seconds.

"Force help me...fine." She took a breath.

"You're our only hope," she said, voice flat, and Lando grinned at her and bounced on his toes.

"You got it, Princess—General," he said, and dipped a bow before bounding out of the room. Leia shook her head.

"Luke—take Rey and find Poe. Do you need Finn?"

"If you can spare him," Luke answered, because wrangling Rey's combination of power and attention could be _interesting_ at the best of times, much more so when she was distracted or anxious, and Finn could help ground her.

"Not _really_ , but...." Leia said, and waved them off. "Fine, take him. Get me Connix."

"General, we're still analyzing the holo feed," Kaydel protested from outside. "I think we can prove it was tampered with."

"Then you go with Calrissian," Leia sighed to Connix, and glared at Finn. _Why couldn't there be two or three of him?_

She realized with a wince that the First Order thought the same thing.

"Go!" she snapped. "Get back here when you're done."

"General, I can—" Jess began to offer.

"No," Statura jumped in. "Acting Commander Pava, I need you putting birds in our skies. We need a perimeter and intel."

Leia nodded. "Get me Wexley. Tell me he's been cleared by Kalonia by now?"

Snap and Jess traded places, each saluting smartly. "I'm clearing myself as of two seconds ago, sirs. Hard to feel depressed when your best friend might be back from the dead."

"Good," Leia said. "Putting you on intel. Figure out where that damned signal is coming from. Dismissed. Where's—I need a stormtrooper. We need them on those videos, looking for any clue. And shut the door."

…

“I need my lightsaber,” Rey said, glad to be out of that mess and on her way to get Poe.

“Uh, no. You won’t need that yet,” Luke explained, disappearing into his rooms and lighting a few candles.

Rey took a breath to fight him on this, but one look from Finn calmed her.

“We don’t know where he _is,_ Rey,” Finn whispered, nudging her to follow Luke.

“Which is precisely what we are going to try to figure out now,” Luke explained, as calmly as he could. “Now that we know Poe is alive, thank the Force, I have an idea, Rey.”  

“What is it?” she demanded.

“Rey,” Luke said slowly, turning away. “I thought you might—since you seem to be receptive to getting Force visions through physical objects...”

When he turned back around, he was holding a bundle of something wrapped in cloth.

Finn sat down on one of Luke’s meditation cushions, pulling Rey to sit beside him. With Rey to focus on, he could almost tamp down on his own anxious energy.

Rey was beginning to panic slightly. That had been a fluke last time, with Luke's lightsaber, hadn't it?

And she couldn't stop thinking about Poe…

“What’s in there?”

Luke sat across from them, and pulled back the cloth to reveal a pair of lightsabers. “From the Knights of Ren that I fought.”

Rey’s eyes lit up.

Finn took her hand, and when she broke her gaze with the sabers on Luke’s knees and looked over at him, he smiled in reassurance. He radiated serenity, and Rey suspected this was intentional: Finn giving her the steadying foundation he knew she needed.

"We don't know if this will work," Rey pointed out. "I wasn't _trying_ to do anything when I touched your lightsaber. I was just...curious. I think that was the Force doing all the work, not me."

Luke shrugged. "You might say it's the Force doing all the work, all the time.”

"Doesn't feel like it," Finn muttered.

"Be open, then," Luke said. "Like you were before. Curious. Not invasive. You can learn more that way, more easily."

Rey nodded, glancing at Finn.

Finn wasn't sure whether she needed his emotional support or his strength in the Force, but he held his hand open on his knee for her.

"Take what you need," he told her, and she nodded and closed her eyes. He felt her reach for him and gladly welcomed her, grounding her as he'd done so many times before. Luke held out the lightsabers, and Rey looked at them for a moment before reaching up to touch them.

And nothing happened.

Rey snarled in frustration and gripped the lightsabers and Finn’s hand, _demanding_ that they show her her bonded partner. She reached, relying on one partner for help in finding the other, who they now _knew_ was out there, somewhere, trapped in _carbonite_ and _dying_ and _needing them._

"Wait for it," Luke reminded her. "Focus on yourself. We have to be one with the Force first, in our minds, and then we can use it to reach out, but not before."

Rey glanced up at him and growled, and he raised his eyebrows at her, utterly unperturbed.

“By all means, though, if you wish to waste time with this inelegant brute force method…” he started, just sharply enough for it to be scolding, and Rey was taken aback. Luke _never_ scolded.

She settled with a harumph and did as she was told, because she could be good at this when she wanted to be, and stubborn. The Force liked her. The Force would surely let her see Poe, would know how she needed this…

But because the Force was stupid, she wasn't allowed to _want_ it.

She could almost hear Obi-Wan encouraging serenity and discouraging attachment, and she let herself slip and meditate and fall past the point that she didn't need to remind Obi-Wan that _she_ wasn't the one hanging around the mortal plane thirty-some-odd years after her death.

"If he's out there, we'll find him," Luke assured them, and waited until she and Finn really were meditating, their fingers tangled together and their minds still.

All was still as Obi-Wan actually appeared, as if summoned by their thoughts.

"Don't you say a word," Rey told him, snapping her eyes open.

Finn, who had never seen the force ghost before, just gaped.

"I was going to help," the old Jedi defended. "This is the path you’ve chosen. I may have reservations as to its wisdom, but you are also my great-granddaughter, and that probably says something about my right to hold those particular reservations.”

Luke made space, and Obi-Wan sat.

"If you join me, I can lead you," he said. "For whatever that’s worth. I can’t see where he is, either, only that he is there."

“I’m going to find him," Rey insisted.

Obi-Wan looked over at Luke with a wry smile, and Luke only shrugged, as if he’d long ago stopped worrying overmuch about his Padawan’s unconventional approach to being a Jedi. Obi-Wan looked back to Rey and Finn and nodded for them to close their eyes and return to meditating. This time, Rey forced herself to be patient, to wait for the Force to come to her before she reached out, this time with two generations of Jedi and one of two beloveds supporting her.

And _then_ it happened just as it had before, for her, almost too easily, almost without her wanting to. She sucked in a breath as the world changed around her, confused vision flashing past her eyes—or her mind's eye.

An ocean, not warm and calm like the ocean of her dreams, but endless and cold and choppy. She plunged down into it, and gasped to hold her breath, though she didn’t need to.  

And there was Poe, falling into her arms. He looked worse than he did on the video, broken and bloody, and he was as cold as ice.

"F-Finn!" she gasped, turning around to find him, but he wasn't there. "Luke? Obi-Wan?"

Now she ran through the corridors of what had to be a First Order vessel—or another Starkiller—but this one was flooding with water, stormtroopers mired in it and drowning. The world spun again, like in her first vision, and she was clutching a lightsaber in each hand, and both were glowing red.

"Finn!"

Rey's grip on his hand was suddenly painful, and she called his name, startling him. They both flinched, each for different reasons, but Rey wasn't letting go, so Finn didn't either.

She saw the way out of the vision, this time, as the First Order hallway upended and tried to dump her back out to reality, but she clung to the wall, determined to stay _in._

There had to be more. Where was Poe in all this mess,? She just had him! Why was a First Order vessel filling with _water_?

A panel on the wall was blinking, letters she couldn’t read from here. She had to climb over to it, quickly, before the vision changed again.

Obi-Wan, of all people, was beside her, looking as real as she had ever seen him, also hanging from part of the wall so he wouldn’t fall away. And the vision had shifted again: they were on the bridge of a Star Destroyer (or so she guessed, only because she had seen them hollowed out and had to guess from the sheer magnitude of it), and he had his lightsaber out and she had hers. Were they fighting each other, or someone else?

“Rey, I will show you more, but you must get out of here now.”

“I can handle it!” she insisted. “I need to know where they are—something is—”

A screen was flashing again, and this time she could read it.

All it said was _Order 67_.

What did that mean? This didn’t help her at all!

“Where is Poe?” she shouted at the empty room. “Show yourself, you coward!”

And there _he_ was. Not Kylo Ren. Not Hux.

Snoke.

The Supreme Leader himself. Tall, white skin, huge dark eyes, long neck, a face that was crumbling like the stone around him. He was _there,_  in an underground, no—under _water_ —palace of some sort. He was huge, towering over her at twenty meters or more.

"You," she said, and at the same time he said, "YOU!"

They were naked in front of each other, all their thoughts and desires laid open. Rey was overwhelmed by the darkness and destruction she felt in him, and was shaken by the dark potential he saw in _her._

For once in her entire life, Rey almost felt sorry for Kylo Ren.

Now she recoiled, and when she blinked and opened her eyes she was back, staring in panic across at Luke. Finn was still beside her, but Obi-Wan had vanished. Rey didn’t much mind (she would have had to admit he was right).

"Rey?"

Rey scrambled up, dragging Finn’s hand with her.

"I know where Snoke is!" she cried, and then swore colorfully. "Kriff shit _fuck_! We have to leave! Snoke knows where _I_ am!"

She wheeled on Finn, realizing she was still death-gripping his hand. "We have to evacuate! And we have to go to—it's Kamino, right? The ocean planet where they made all the clones for the war? That's where he is! That's where _Poe_ is, Finn! Snoke, he’s Kaminoan!"

Finn bolted to his feet, and Luke climbed to his a little more slowly—but as soon as everyone was standing, there was an organized scramble to get the evacuation underway and inform Leia of what Rey had found. Finn left it to Rey and Luke to talk to the General, and he went to the nearest comm to broadcast a base-wide announcement.

"Attention, all personnel, we need to commence evacuations immediately. This is not, unfortunately, a drill."

"Belay that command!” the General barked at Finn as he returned to the Command Center. “What the hell are you doing, Major?!"

Luke held up a hand, but Rey interjected. "It's my fault, General. I—we know where Poe is. And—and _Snoke._ "

There were gasps around the room, and a hush settled. Even Leia looked stunned. "But Snoke knows where _we_ are, too. We—saw each other. I’m sorry. I was so startled, I—I didn’t mean to. But don’t know what he saw."

Rey couldn't help but notice a few people taking a step away from her, as if to be out of the line of fire, or for some other reason. She felt shaky and empty, like she hadn’t eaten for days. She had done too much, pushed too far, in every way possible.

"Damn it," Leia swore.

“I’m sorry,” Rey said again.

There was a long silence.

"All right, we can't afford to risk it. We evacuate. Yavin IV is our last hope. Again."


	5. Chapter 5

The second evacuation in as many weeks delayed all their transports, but it also ended up being a kind of boon. 

Leia was surprised when Timons and Sevens approached with their very own plan: they, and all the former stormtroopers, twenty-seven in all, now, offered to go to the Senate and testify directly and publically against the First Order. It was dangerous, they knew—assassinations were among the least of their concerns—but they wanted to do it, and Leia trusted Lando to get them there and keep them safe.

Kes Dameron greeted them in person, the first day they set up shop in their new secret base on Yavin IV. He had a child strapped to his back, and Leia realized with a start that it was Sam—she hadn’t remembered how many months it had been until she saw how he had grown.

“Where the hell is my son, Organa?” he demanded. “First I get a call saying he’s dead, and the next he’s a terrorist on the holonet!” 

“Dameron!” she shot back. “What the hell are you doing here? This is a secret base and—how did you even get into  _ here? _ ” 

She spluttered, glaring at her guards and aides, who looked as confused as she was to find someone had snuck through their defenses and right into their command center.

“Okay, first of all, Pathfinder, remember? And second, this is, like, my back yard practically, and third of all, you still haven’t answered me about my son. About Poe. Not you, mijo,” he said, spotting Finn, finally, and pointing to him. 

Finn, who was finally meeting his something of a father-in-law in person, couldn’t manage much more than a dazed smile at the sight of him, in the flesh, with Sammy strapped onto his back. He looked taller than he would have guessed.

Sammy, who hadn't seen his parents in person in months, shrieked in delight and tried promptly to squirm free of the wrap.

And Rey, who'd missed Kes and Sam both, but had other things to worry about, marched up to Kes, her jaw set. 

"I know where Poe is. We're going to rescue him," she told him matter-of-factly, and then threw her arms around his neck. "I'm sorry we didn't know sooner, and that we left him, and—I'm so sorry." 

“It’s all right, mija.” Kes' stern face melted before Rey, and he broke into a grin and touched her face, but nearly burst into tears at the sight of Finn. 

"Ai, mijo, my boy, my  _ son _ , come here," he said, pulling him into a hug, not caring who was watching. 

Then he pulled back and held him out at arm's length. "Hey, that's my jacket," he said with a smile, and clapped him on the shoulder and wiped his eyes. 

"So, you're going after Poe?" His eyes took on a haunted look, like Leia's, the eyes of a parent who had suffered the loss of a child but still had a mad  _ hope _ of getting him back.

"We're bringing him home," Finn said. He refused to entertain any other possible ending. They weren't just going after Poe, they were going after him to bring him home, where he belonged. Kes nodded, and then he pulled Rey and Finn both into another hug.

"You both be careful—all  _ three  _ of you had better make it back. You still have a wedding to attend, once you've settled on a new date," he said quietly, his voice a little rough and scratchy, his hands going to cup their cheeks. 

Through all of this, Sam had apparently felt ignored, and he screeched again, right in Kes' ear. 

"Okay, Sammy, okay, you want to see your dad and your mom?" Kes asked, freeing the wriggly baby and handing him to Finn, who could have cried at the sheer relief of seeing Sam again, alive and well and happy.

"While I hate to break up this moment, Finn—Rey— _ Kes _ ," Leia said, exasperated. "I can't authorize—" 

The three mutinous glares she received stopped her. 

"In my office. Now."

They trooped into Leia's office, Finn holding a squirmy and elated and still-babbling Sam, and Rey cooing and making faces at him. It was the first time she'd felt anything resembling  _ normal  _ since they'd lost Poe. 

Of the three of them, it was Kes who sobered immediately and met Leia's gaze.

"You know I can't—" Leia began at the very moment Kes said, "Leia—" and they both stopped and stared at each other. 

"General," Kes began again, with due decorum this time. "They've got my  _ son _ —" 

"And they've got mine, Kes," she snapped back. "There's no way I can authorize a rescue mission, our numbers are too small and we're spread too thin already. It would be suicide, they are clearly baiting us, and—you know Poe wouldn't want it."

At this, Finn looked up. "General, with all due respect... We've done worse. We've gone into worse situations with less of a plan and we've survived." 

Not that this was an especially good line of reasoning, but he didn't really care at the moment. "We thought he was dead. We were doing our best to cope and keep fighting because it's what he would have wanted. But he's  _ not gone _ ." 

He glanced over at Rey, who looked every bit as stubborn about this as he did. "General, you know I would give my life for this Resistance... But you can't tell us to just leave Poe there. We can't. We  _ won't _ ." 

And, though he knew it amounted to something like mutiny, he added, "We'll stand our best chance of success if you don't try to stop us."

Leia put her hands on her desk, and then sat heavily. "I'm down my best pilot, Finn. Don't make me lose the last Jedi and my right-hand man, too." 

She gave him an even stare. 

"I won't let you down, General," Finn answered solemnly, and they held that stare before her eyes flicked to Rey, wanting that promise from her, too. 

"We'll bring him back," she insisted. "And ourselves." 

Sensing something, either in the Force or in Leia, Rey walked around the desk and knelt in front of her. 

"And someday, we'll bring Ben back, too," she said, surprised by the strong stab of an emotion welling up in her that somehow  _ wasn't _ hate. 

It was Leia's feeling, she realized now, a mother's love—frustration,  _ anger _ , a desire for justice, yes, but not hate. (Rey wondered, briefly, whether Sam could ever do anything that could ever make her hate him the way she hated Kylo Ren. She didn’t think there was.) It helped her understand one or two things a lot clearer, better than anything Luke or Obi-Wan had ever taught her. And maybe it was just the hope of seeing her fiancé again, but she thought the distant siren call of the Dark Side was that much quieter.

Leia touched her cheek, and the moment passed. 

"I need you to wait a few more days. We still need the  _ Falcon's  _ cargo bay to resupply," Leia said, turning back to the table. "And in that time, I want you to have a  _ plan _ . We don't have to go in half-cocked, this time, so let's not."

Finn nodded—this was a reasonable and expected request. 

"We'll even have backup plans. Our backup plans will have backup plans," he told her, and when she looked at him like she couldn't decide if he was being funny, he smiled. "I'm actually very serious about that.” 

They were going to plan for as many eventualities as possible. 

"Thank you, General," he said, and Leia sighed deeply. 

"As your General, I do not appreciate the thinly veiled ultimatum you just gave me, Major," she said tersely. 

Finn winced. 

"However, as someone who cares about both of you and about Poe, I am glad to hear that you're determined to rescue him and get all three of you home." 

Rey and Finn eyed each other for just a moment, neither sure how to respond.

"I think what the General is saying is that there are times when one's duty to the cause may conflict with one's duty to your family," Kes provided, and Leia nodded to him in thanks. “And to choose family.” 

"Keep in mind this guy left my husband and stole one of my best pilots to  _ settle down _ ," Leia muttered, giving Kes a wry grin. 

"Best thing I ever did," Kes beamed. 

"You have more gray hair than me."

"What, you don't dye yours? Shit," Kes said, scrubbing his hands through his hair, and laughing. 

Leia's eyes flicked to Finn and Rey. "You're not relieved of your other duties in the meantime. And I want a plan on my desk by midday tomorrow." 

Finn (and even Rey, inspired), snapped a salute. Kes helped Sam try one out, but the baby was too busy trying to eat his hand to salute with it.

...

The next few days was spent unpacking the base, which was only easy because they had so little to unpack. They found ample space in the old Jedi temple, including hangar space sufficient for all of their ships. Kes, not to be left out or sit idle, took charge of the arms and armaments situation, seeing that in the absence of the stormtroopers to hyper-organize, everything still got to its assigned place, clean and serviceable. Sam was content to nap against his grandfather's back or watch the world from over his shoulder. Finn and Rey, who would have liked to find excuses to help Kes, had too many other problems to attend to. They didn't see Kes until the sun was setting two days later.

And Kes wasn't alone, this time. Three trucks drove up, laden with what they all thought were crates, perhaps of weapons or supplied, but were actually filled with food. 

_ Hot _ food. 

_ Homemade _ food.

"The fam just whipped up a little something for you guys," Kes said modestly, though it was a huge and extravagant spread. Gunny barked everyone into an orderly line for chow before they had to get back to work. It was all local foods: empanadas, beans, rice, calabacitas—and there was even flan for dessert. 

It took Rey until she was halfway through her meal to realize that this was the food for their  _ wedding _ . 

They clearly hadn't wanted it to go to waste, and if there wasn't a party, at least there was an army to feed. 

It was all she could do to not burst into tears. 

Finn, sensing her unease, looked around. Kes was staring at them from where he was dishing out food to the hungry troops (Snap was back in line for empanadas), and he tried avoiding Finn's eyes and then giving him a sad smile, as if to say how sorry he was.

Finn looked at his plate, still half full of food, and at Rey's plate, and hunched his shoulders. Their wedding feast. They were supposed to have married Poe by now, he was supposed to be here eating this, and while they now knew he at least still lived, Finn's heart hurt. He wanted Poe—wanted him here, and healthy, and happy. And safe. And  _ his _ .

He looked at his food again to find he wasn't really hungry. Rey, apparently having decided the same thing, leaned against his shoulder and sighed.

"Come on, now, eat up," said a voice, and Kes clapped a hand on each of their shoulders, and then crouched down between them, his joints creaking only a little. "I'm sorry I didn't ask you, first. But it wasn't going to keep much longer, and Poe would want, I think—ah..." 

He shrugged. "It's just food. We'll make more. We still have all the decorations and—it's not the first postponed wedding in the galaxy, chins up! I'll come find you when we've cleaned up, okay, niños? Eat your dinner, or no dessert!"

Rey and Finn both smiled at this, and dutifully poked at their food when Kes left. 

"Do you  _ really  _ think he wouldn't let us have dessert?" Finn asked. “That seems counter-intuitive.” 

Rey nodded emphatically. “It’s some rule parents tell their kids to make them eat their dinner. The healthy stuff.” 

Rey poked at her plate some more, and then put down her fork, impatient. "We should plan and eat at the same time. We need to figure out how to get Poe." 

Finn nodded and went back to picking at his own food while he thought.

"Okay, so we know we can't take a huge force because we'll draw attention... Which means we can't just light them up with every starship we have, either. Not that it would be enough. And they might kill him if they know we’re coming. So how do we get on board? What do we know about the ship?"

Rey was about to answer, but there was a commotion at the entrance to the mess hall.

"Video's up! The stormtroopers are on!" Jess announced to the room at large, setting off a mad scramble.

There, in the middle of the Senate floor, stood a the stormtroopers, huddled close together and in formation, escorted by Kaydel Connix in her Resistance greens, and Lando Calrissian in a cape that somehow managed to catch a breeze indoors. The camera zoomed in, and Finn smiled at the familiar faces. 

Deeks, endearing and engaging and grinning, stepped forward and nodded a greeting to someone off camera.

"Deeks—that is your name, correct?" a voice asked as the camera panned around to Deeks' face.

"Yeah, that's—I mean, yes ma'am. Ah. Yes, First Senator," he said, and Finn was pretty sure he heard not one, but two palms hit two faces somewhere behind him—Lando and Kaydel.

"Why are you here, Deeks?" 

"We're all formerly stormtroopers. There are some things you need to know about the First Order," he answered. 

The gathered audience gasped, and he smiled sheepishly.

"How about you start with  _ former _ stormtroopers? I wasn’t aware stormtroopers still existed, much less could defect. It seems a convenient infiltration tactic," the person said.

"You mean start with how I became one, instead of dealing with all your other accusations?" 

More than one person in the audience snorted, but presumably the woman nodded, because Deeks brightened. 

"Oh! Sure, I can tell you." He bounced on his toes as if thinking where to start. "Well, basically, Finn, he used to be FN-2187, he threw me out of my AT-AA, that’s an All-Terrain Anti-Aircraft walker, while I was trying to shoot down the Resistance transports because we, that is, the First Order, were attacking their base. I didn't even know he really existed! They told us he wasn't real, just some propaganda made up by the Resistance to get us to betray the First Order and desert. They uh...there was a rumor that they were doing it to weed out the deserters, so they could recondition them." 

“All right, let’s back up. Who are your parents, Deeks, as you are clearly a minor. What planet are you from? What is reconditioning?” 

The other stormtroopers in the shot behind him went still, and everything was quiet in the Senate and in the little room on Yavin where they'd all packed to watch.

“Well, again, I’ll start with your first and most sensitive question—” a few more titters in the audience— “to which the answer is, I have no parents I’m aware of, since the First Order kidnapped me at a young age to indoctrinate me into their military.” 

Finn grimaced: Deeks was laying it on a little thick, and was going to get himself in trouble. He knew the pilots were a bad influence on him. 

“How does that video have a million views  _ already _ ?!” someone cried, sending a murmur through the group watching the feed. It has only been uploaded to the holonet a few hours ago, and hadn’t even reached the Outer Rim yet. But Deeks was cute, and funny, his story one of adventure, and sass. 

Whoever this First Senator was, she was tough, but Deeks could handle her.

Timons’ was the next video, and hers was harder to watch, as much for her story as how she was intimidated by the questions, but she finally managed her story: 

“The First Order used intimidation and fear to control me throughout my entire career with them. Several officers took sexual advantage of me on many occasions, because as stormtroopers we were not able to say ‘no,’ and I had a mind that was useful to them and a body that pleased many of them. I am told that this kind of thing happens even in the Republic military, and this was against protocol, but in the First Order I had no one to turn to. 

“I wish that I could tell you that I blocked this out, or that with therapy I am getting better, but I have a perfect memory, Senators. So I remember every incident clearly, and I will never forget them. You are welcome to test my memory, should you wish to verify that the following Senators are embezzling their planets’ funds to support the First Order war machine which destroyed Hosnia and the New Republican government,” she said, and unscripted, listed twenty-three names, causing a stir in the Senate. “They can try to deny it or flee now, because I have their account numbers and relevant transaction numbers memorized, as well. Is this being recorded?” 

It was at this point in the feed that blaster shots rang out, pinging off the forcefield protecting the stormtroopers as they testified, followed by mass panic as Timons, refusing to back down, continued shouting names and numbers over the din. 

When order was finally restored to the room, Timons was still standing in front of the stormtroopers, back straight, not even a hint of fear in her face. Then she blinked, Deeks shifted, and Sevens touched her arm. She gave a small bow and stepped back to let Sevens take the floor. They were only speaking to approximately half the Senate, now. The others had presumably either been detained or fled the detaining.

When Sevens finished speaking, the others each took their turns, and the Senators were given the opportunity to ask questions. Deeks answered many of them, since he was somewhat the de facto leader of the group, and since he was the youngest and least intimidating of them all.

The testimony wasn't even over before: 

"Uh, bosses? I think...how is this even possible?" Teena asked from where she was monitoring a feed of news from across the Republic. "Shit. He's gone viral." 

Leia was surprised these were aired live, and guessed Lando had greased some palms or called in a few favors (or made a few threats). 

It was good to have a scoundrel on her side again. 

Finn watched the videos almost without blinking, sharing in the retributive glee of Timons and the quiet justice of Sevens and the excitement of Deeks—and all the others, all twenty-seven of them, now. Would have been twenty-eight with him; thirty if Tova and Nova were still here (and Deeks told their story, too, later, sobbing the whole way through it, how the TIE pilots siblings had used the energy shields of their own starfighter to protect their new comrades). The former stormtroopers could mostly only speak of their mistreatment at the hands of the Order, but many could confirm orders they had been given, policies that were relevant, propaganda they had been indoctrinated to believe, and above all, the terror of the Empire which the First Order recreated. 

No Senator could afford to ignore that, at least not with the whole galaxy watching. 

“Why didn’t you rise up under First Order rule?” some poor idiot asked. “If the stormtroopers had a revolution, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

Timons was on this one, more disdainful than they had ever seen her. 

“Well,” she said. “Even  _ if  _ a stormtrooper could work through the reconditioning and propaganda they had been fed their entire lives, even  _ if  _ they somehow glimpsed some aspect of a life outside the Order as a possible alternative to what they had been taught, even if they could work through the fear which is used to control them, the First Order has failsafes in place for that.”

“Their stormtroopers are exceptionally loyal, they claim. Programmed from birth. It’s not quite the truth: what we think is their first batch of clone troopers are just now being born and  indoctrinated and trained, are even now being ‘programmed’ while your children enjoy freedom. But they  _ are  _ scared of their own stormtroopers.

“Platoons who show signs of deviancy disappear. Individuals can be reconditioned, sometimes, and executed, other times. If Finn were here, or Commander Dameron if you don’t trust us, if they were here, they could testify that the First Order would rather destroy a cloning facility of ten thousand clones rather than let it fall into any hands other than their own. Every Star Destroyer can be vented to space—in case of boarding, of course. But also in case of uprising. They call it Order 67. So, no, we didn’t think defecting was even a possibility, much less rebellion, until FN-2187 did it.” 

_ That’s it _ , Finn thought, loud enough for Rey to hear, and stood up. 

“Finn?” 

“That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“Rey.” Finn took her hands. “I’m gonna need you to tell me everything about your vision again. But I think I have a plan.” 


	6. Chapter 6

“Finn, this is crazy,” Rey said. “Why didn’t you tell Leia about any of this?”

In the briefing room yesterday, with the General, Admiral Statura, Connix, Dr. Kalonia, and Kes, Finn’s plan had been minimalist, straightforward. Get in, get BB-8 to a terminal so they could activate the Star Destroyer’s failsafes, get Poe out in the ensuing chaos—preferably still frozen—so he could be revived and treated in safety.

Now she realized that had just been The Plan That Would Get Approved. Finn’s _actual_ plan was...

More complicated.

“Look, you should have seen my plan to rescue you from Starkiller, or my plan to rescue Poe from the _Finalizer_ , or both of you from the _Vapor_ ,” Finn said defensively. “At least I’m not winging it this time.”

They were sitting back-to-back in a stolen TIE fighter, but Finn could still feel her glaring at him.

“Okay, not _entirely_ winging it. The plan is flexible by design.”

Rey made a face. “It’s a good thing I love you.”

“I know,” Finn said, and took a steadying breath. “Okay, so when we’re hailed, you have to—”

“ _I_ have to _what_?!” Rey yelped.

“You’re the pilot,” Finn explained calmly. “Also you have that...Core accent. Which makes you sound like...ah—”

“I sound like a fascist? Thanks.”

“Rey.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I can do this.”

“You can do this,” Finn agreed.

“And for the record, I thought a sun-swallowing superweapon was the height of ridiculous villain crap.”

“Up there with punching your own wounds to get angrier,” Finn agreed with a chuckle, and then added without mirth: “And blowing up cloning facilities at the first sign that someone might have seen them.”

“But hiding a fleet underwater on an ocean planet?! Adapting an entire Star Destroyer for not only atmospheric pressure—which should be impossible, it’s just too big—but oceanic pressure? That’s _holonovella_ stuff, Finn. Who does that?”  

Finn shrugged as they guided the TIE closer to the surface. "Megalomaniac bad guys? All they're missing is the moustaches..."

Rey laughed softly. The joke wouldn’t have been funny if the situation weren’t so dire.

"But seriously, can you imagine Ren with one of those big moustaches?" Finn asked.

Rey was about to answer that it might be an improvement on his face when they were hailed.

"TIE-2478, verify your authorization," a somewhat bored voice told them, and Rey took a breath before answering. Here went nothing...

"This is TIE-2478, authorization delta three-oh-niner, returning from reconnaissance and requesting permission to board.”

Of course, Rey didn’t have any codes, but was pulling this string of numbers out of her ass and using the Force to strongly suggest to the guy on the other end that it was a real authorization code.

There was a tense silence, where she had a hard grip on the throttle in case they needed to—

"You are cleared to board. Hatch 937," the voice told them, and there was a rumbling and frothing of the ocean's surface as the amphibious destroyer surfaced and opened a hatch set in the top deck—the entrance to the landing bay.

"Here goes," Finn muttered. "Ready, Bee?" he asked the little droid, who was nestled into the cockpit with them.

They whistled in the affirmative.

[We will rescue Friend-Poe] they added with an air of comforting certainty.

"That looks—really cool," Rey admitted, awed by the destroyer breaching the surface of the water like a huge whale, though she quickly refocused, guiding the TIE down and into a docking bay. The clamps settled around the starfighter, locking it into place, and slowly they watched the doors close over them.

"Okay. Helmets on?" Rey said, making sure her hair was tucked up into the fighter pilot helmet as the seal hissed closed.

"You wait here, BB-8," she said, "I'll get you out of the access panel in the back.”

[I'm telling you, you should have repainted me] BB-8 said.

Finn chuckled. “No BB units on any star destroyer, of any color."

[They’re missing out.]

By the time Finn had climbed out of the TIE, Rey had pried open the hatch in the bottom. She lifted BB-8 down quietly using the Force and they rolled over to Finn and bumped companionably at his shins. The little droid had been mostly repaired by Rey, but they still wobbled unevenly and had not been repainted, so they looked oddly plain.

Finn crouched in front of them and laid a hand on their dome.

"Ready to slice the failsafe system?" he asked, and BB-8 rocked in excitement.

[We will flood the ship! But not the whole ship] they announced.

"Yeah, uhh, not yet. That's still kind of a last resort thing, buddy," Finn reminded the droid as the trio made their stealthy way through the ship.

"This console should do," Rey said, ripping out a panel and ripping out something that looked redundant so she could help BB-8 roll inside. "How's that look, Bee?"

[This should be a good terminal! Quick, hide me!] BB-8 chirped, as Rey quickly resealed the hatch just as a patrol came around the corner.

"What are you doing?" one of them barked.

Rey and Finn froze, both grasping for a believable explanation. They weren’t supposed to get caught this soon. There was no way BB-8 could slice into the network, much less its security systems, in time, if they discovered the droid.

Well, Rey hadn’t been perfectly honest with Finn about _her_ plan, either.

"We're, uh..." Finn started, but Rey put her hand on his wrist.

She gave him an apologetic look and stepped forward.

"You're going to take me to the bridge and forget you ever saw anyone else," she told them, at the same time as she pulled off her helmet, waiting for recognition to sink in.

“Rey, _no—_ ”

The patrol regarded them, and Finn held his breath, trying to think invisible thoughts. Rey strained; she had never tried to mind-trick this many people before. But perhaps the capture of the Jedi training under Luke Skywalker was too great a temptation.

"We are taking you to the bridge," the leader finally said, and they surrounded Rey, pushing past Finn like he wasn’t there. Two took her arms, another relieved her of her comlink and lightsaber, and she went with them.

They left Finn standing alone in the passageway.

[Friend-Finn! Friend-Finn! Where is Friend-Rey going? I do not yet have the security codes] BB-8 warbled worriedly. The droid's beeps were inaudible through the wall, linking directly into his comlink. 

"It's okay, Bee," Finn said, staring after her. "She's doing her job. You worry about yours."

[I know, I know] BB-8 said, and Finn detected a sense of worry that was almost as bad as 3PO's. They would all be better when they had Poe back.

[I found—] the poor droid spluttered, unable to say it. They'd had a hard time not saying 'Master-Poe,' they were so worried. 

"It's okay, Bee," Finn coached. "Where is he?"

[Prison bloc 21-87.]

Of course he was. They were expecting him after all.

"Okay. BB-8, I'm gonna go after him. I'll be on the comlink. Let me know when you get those codes."

...

_Rey._

Oh, my gods, great-grandfather. Not now.

_Y-you don't want my help?_

You'll help? I thought you'd lecture me!

_Well, later I will. But right now, there's a lightsaber style I think you could stand to benefit from._

Oh? What could you help me with now?

_We've got a long walk. Did I ever tell you about the time I fought a sith called Darth Maul? He had a two-weapon fighting style like yours..._

...

This ship wasn't so much different from the _Finalizer_ , Finn realized—that First Order uniformity—and he could almost find his way through muscle memory. The prison blocs were located midship, on a low deck, and it took him a while to get there. It was, by design, as far as possible from their avenue of escape, and he dodged a few patrols on his way down. Mask or not, he hadn't seen any lone stormtroopers so far, which meant he'd stick out like a sore thumb.

Ducking into an alcove as a pair went by, Finn waited and listened as the stormtroopers loitered.

“I’m telling you, he’s not coming,” one of them said.

“You’re totally wrong. Eight-Seven isn’t going to leave us all here,” the other replied, in a hushed whisper.

Both voices sounded female, and young. Finn’s helmet display listed them as LT-9266 and LT-9337.  

“Long as we don’t get stationed to the Outer Rim first. Or what if he just blows us all up?”

“Nah, they’ve got his boyfriend. We’re safe as—hey, what’s—uh…”

Both stormtroopers had turned their heads, and were staring at Finn in the alcove.

He froze, begging silently with his eyes but knowing nothing showed on the helmet. Nothing would register in their helmets, of course, because this armor’s code cylinders had been scrubbed.

“Nothing to see here. Move along,” one of them said loudly, and stood as lookout down the hall, while the other stepped closer to Finn and removed her helmet, revealing a shock of dark hair and almond-shaped eyes that reminded him of Deeks’, and not just because she looked so young.

“A-are you _Eight-Seven_?”

Finn paused, but not too long. He knew better than to trust them so automatically, but he kind of had no choice. Maybe he trusted in the Force. More likely this was just who he was.

“Yes.”

He took off his helmet, too, to let her see his face, and the awe written across her features made Finn feel almost uncomfortable. But the stormtroopers marveled for only a minute before LT-9266 replaced her helmet and they both snapped to attention.

“How can we help?”

Finn grimaced. There was too much to do and not enough time: impossible for three beings, but just as crazy for five to try.

“I’m gonna need backup in the prison bloc,” Finn said. “Just, ah. Spread the word that we're here to rescue you. We’re gonna send a message to those still loyal to the First Order, or on the fence about it.”

LT-9337 nodded. “Of course. You demand absolute loyalty. We can begin purging—”

“No, no! Not _that_ kind of message. The opposite of that. You’ll see.”

“Just, get everyone you can who wants out to go to the prison bloc or the bridge. Rey’s there. The Jedi.”

Now the stormtroopers took a step back, and Finn chuckled.

“Yeah. Ah. For sure don’t get in _her_ way.”

...

"The girl I've heard so much about," Rey heard as she entered the Bridge.

She looked up as the stormtroopers parted, revealing a slick of greasy red hair and a sour face underneath it. 

"A pleasure to meet you, Rey," said General Hux, in person, turning around to face her.

The bridge was packed with stormtroopers, and something told Rey that these were not among the ones who were going to jump at a chance to get out of the First Order.


	7. Chapter 7

[I have the codes] BB-8 said in his ear, before Finn had even reached the prison bloc.

"Buddy, you're amazing. Hold tight for me," he responded softly.  _ Let no one ever doubt BB-8's loyalty to their pilot _ , Finn thought.

He ducked into a storage closet and checked that he was alone before speaking. 

"Okay, Bee, I need you to make those codes come up on every terminal you can," he instructed. "I want you to show  _ everyone _ . Make sure Phasma knows. If you can get it to display in every helmet, that would be great. We want every stormtrooper to see what the First Order thinks of them." 

[Got it] BB-8 said, and all around Finn, terminals began to light up. 

...

"I was  _ hoping  _ you'd be Snoke," Rey said. “Or at least Ren.” 

"Don't be stupid, girl. The Supreme Leader is several steps ahead of you. When—if—you meet him, his victory will already be complete." 

Rey snarled. "No. Because I'm going to stop you. I'm here to take back Poe Dameron, and I'm going to bring you all to justice. Alive, or dead." 

Hux laughed, motioning to the stormtroopers around him. "My dear, even if you are a Jedi, you couldn't  _ possibly _ . I can deal with Ren's tantrums. I can certainly deal with yours."

“I’m not a Jedi,” Rey said. “And it’s not  _ just  _ me you have to worry about.” 

The consoles all around them lit up, and a small commotion broke out. "Sir, we have a security breach—Order 67 is..." the aide trailed off, and Hux got impatient:

"Activated?" 

"No, sir.  _ Published _ ?" 

Hux went to a console himself, looking like  _ he _ was about to throw a tantrum. There was a short moment of very complete silence. She could see a vein in his temple jumping where he had his stupid hair slicked to one side. 

"Where is Captain Phasma?!" he shrieked, and the bridge jumped to life again. She heard a few people murmur ‘What’s Order 67?’

Hux jerked his head at Rey. "Put her in binders and freeze her, too." 

Stormtroopers grabbed her. 

“Sir, FN-2187 has been spotted in the prison bloc.” 

"Good. Kill the prisoner, and flood and seal the whole bloc." 

"NO!" Rey screamed, and threw the guards off of her with a mighty push of the Force, diving out of their reach in a backflip. 

Her lightsaber soared to her hands and ignited. 

"YOU FOOLS! YOU BROUGHT HER WEAPON IN HERE? HOW COULD YOU LET HER BE IN THE SAME ROOM WITH A LIGHTSABER?!"

Rotating from her hips, Rey jumped into a spinning kick, swinging her double-blades to cut down everything in her path to General Hux. 

She kicked the stormtrooper who took her comlink in the chest and put it back in her ear. 

"Finn! Finn, it's happening. You have to get to Poe  _ now _ !"

...

He hadn’t reached section 21, yet, so Finn was actually glad when the alarm sounded, and every passing console read  _ Order 67: Failsafe in case of stormtrooper uprising. _ He could move faster now that everyone he passed was panicking at the revealed order, and, now, were running away from the flooding prison bloc. They had no time nor inclination to try to stop him.

Though one idiot did try.

When Finn entered the quickly flooding prison bloc, there was one last person inside, standing with their weapon raised while everyone else fled. 

"Help or move." Finn gave the stormtrooper the option. 

“They said you’d be coming. I’ll be a hero if I can kill the infamous Eight-Seven.”

Finn had no time for this. He shot the stormtrooper in the arm, causing him to drop his blaster, but he didn’t look intimidated and stepped toward him, even while water rushed around their ankles. 

It wasn’t as quick as depressurizing in the vacuum of space, but it would be just as deadly. Probably cheaper, in the long run. 

Finn ducked a wild swing and had the stormtrooper in a headlock before he registered what was happening—the next moment, he was dead, his neck broken.

Now Finn looked around. The doors were sealed, of course, but a quick call to BB-8 had the droid splicing the firewall so Finn could open it. 

As Finn shoved open the doors manually, more water rushed out, and he could hear prisoners screaming in panic. Of course, just one section of the prison bloc was huge. “BB-8, I’m gonna need you to start working on all the locks, starting with this sector. Just open everything, we can’t let these people die in here.” 

These thoughts were objective, like, they needed to be done, but Finn was having trouble caring. All he cared about right now was getting to Poe. 

And when he got to him, there was a faint glowing coming from inside the cell. 

“No, no,” Finn whispered. He thought this might happen. It was what he would have done if he were the First Order. “No!” 

They were unfreezing Poe. 

Underwater. 

...

Cold was the first sensation coming out of the carbon freeze, sharper even than the all-encompassing pain that was back again (or still there). Cold, then unbearable heat, like when you come into a warm room out of frigid air and your limbs are returning to life—and then a duller, more permanent cold was back. 

There was a roaring in Poe's ears, a roaring beyond his own blood pumping again, beyond his brain screaming at him, and Poe gasped. 

And promptly choked. 

_ Why can’t I breathe?  _ he wondered in a panic. Cold, disoriented, his body barely working (as much now from the crash as from the carbon poisoning), Poe’s panic began to rise as he tried to put it all together. They had frozen him, and taken him back out. That could only be bad. What were they going to do with him now? How long had he been on ice? 

These thoughts fired off all at once, anxious, terrified, and he tried another breath. 

Gods, no, his lungs were collapsed, too full of blood, he was drowning—

Or—or else: he was  _ drowning _ . Yes, his eyes were stinging from water, and he heard his voice gargle away the last of his oxygen in air bubbles. 

They had unfrozen him  _ underwater _ . This was an execution.

Poe thrashed weakly, but he was still bound to the same medical table, and, gods, moving hurt too much, even through the immediate desperate need for air. The permanent darkness of his vision made everything worse. It could be a meter of water or a bare puddle, and it was more than he could get through. 

Poe wondered, distantly, if they were watching. If they were  _ filming _ again, if they would send this to Rey and to Finn—

...

Finn actually felt the moment that Poe woke through the Force, and had to flinch away from the gnarled mess of pain and panic he was broadcasting.

Here! Poe was  _ here _ ! Thank all the gods he was still alive. 

Finn slammed into the heavy prison door, peering through the narrow viewport. Poe was at the back of the cell, already engulfed in that freezing ocean water. The water had reached the window, cell door was still locked. 

“Poe! Shit! BB-8, I need this door open now! 21-87!” 

[Working on it!]

Finn drew his blaster, preparing to shoot the door. 

[Whatever you do, don’t shoot the—]

“Why?”

[No door defaults to “unlocked” if you shoot it! What kind of design would that be? There, it’s open! It’s open!] BB-8 screeched.

The force of the water nearly knocked Finn down when he shoved open the cell door. It joined the water already rushing out of all the other prison cells, along with hundreds of prisoners—some of them Finn might even know, but he wasn’t really thinking about that now—bringing the water in the outer chamber up to Finn's waist in a wave, as everything kept filling.

The horrible freezing pressure on Poe’s face let up as the water rushed away, quite suddenly. Poe tried a breath again, found air, but coughed and spluttered on the water already in his lungs, and then water, still rising, slammed back into him and over his head again.

Nothing could have prepared Finn for the sight of Poe stripped almost naked and strapped to a medical table, barely struggling as the water level continued to rise. His body was so mangled and bloody that if not for the Force, Finn might not have recognized him immediately. 

But Poe was  _ here _ , Poe was alive, he had to get Poe out. Finn fumbled with the restraints that held Poe’s chest to the table, and lifted Poe’s head above the waterline so he could breathe while he freed the rest of him. 

Poe spluttered again, choking, vomiting up water as his body did what it was supposed to, trying to get air, but gods, everything,  _ everything  _ hurt, and he was so cold, except through that he could hear, or thought he could hear, a voice over the roaring water: 

"I'm here, I'm here, Poe, you’re gonna be okay, I’ve got you, I love you, I thought I'd—oh,  _ Poe _ ," Finn sobbed, and kept repeating this as he gathered Poe close and lifted him off the table.

Finn?  _ Finn _ . Gods, Finn! 

That was more important, for a long moment, than air, though as he tried to gasp out Finn's name a rush of water came out and then his body was wracked with coughing—strangled, weak,  _ drowning _ coughing—and there was still somehow water inside him and all around him. He wondered if it was getting in through the open wounds in his lungs. 

"Come on, I'm gonna get you out of here," Finn said. “Stay with me.”

If all Poe had to do was  _ not die _ —he couldn't even make himself hold onto Finn, if even any of his limbs worked or were still attached to him, he was so focused on just coughing and breathing—then Poe would do his damndest.

“Okay. Good, you're good. Let’s get out of here, huh?” Finn said. He pressed a kiss to Poe’s brow and shifted him so he could carry him more easily. Once they were out of the cell, Finn shut the door behind them, and then the bloc doors as well once he was through them, to slow the flood. He waded through the knee-deep water, then shin-deep, and eventually they made it to ankle-deep water, and he closed the blast doors behind him. Once they'd reached a hall that was clearly flooded only by proxy, he shut and sealed the last door and laid Poe on the ground. 

Poe was still trying to cough up water, and Finn gently lifted him into a sitting position in his arms, his heart pounding and his limbs shaky. "Come on, Poe, breathe. You're going to be okay, love. I promise. I'm not going to let you be anything else. I need you to breathe for me."

He pulled Poe forward against his chest now, trying to force more water from his lungs without breaking his clearly fragile body any further. As Poe gasped and spluttered, Finn could only comb through Poe's hair very gently with his fingers, noticing where it was matted with blood in spite of the salt-water bath. He added, "Rey’s here. We’re gonna make sure you’re okay." 

[And BB-8! Friend-Poe, BB-8 is here!] the little droid shrieked into Finn's comm.

"And also your favorite little astromech," he said to Poe.

This actually made Poe’s lip twitch into an almost-grin, and he tried to move or say something, because he was uncomfortably conscious, but he could give little more than a cough and a jiggle of his head. 

“It’s okay, don’t try to talk.”

Don’t try to talk? He was Poe Dameron, that was all he  _ did _ . 

“Krif,” he managed, through sheer stubbornness. 

“Yeah, I got you. Don’t try to move. I’ve got you,” Finn said. It was hard not to look at Poe’s missing arm when he said this, but at least  _ that  _ wasn’t bleeding. Finn pulled the small medkit off his belt and spread bacta foam over what looked like the worst of his injuries. Poe had been stripped down to his underwear—even his dogtags and his engagement ring were gone—so Finn unclasped his breastplate and vambraces to get at his undersuit so he’d have something to cover Poe with. 

It was pathetically minimal triage, but they couldn’t stay here longer. 

Poe didn’t actually shiver until something body-warm was wrapped around him, and then it felt like he couldn’t stop. He blinked dizzily, though he still couldn't see, and every sudden movement made his heart thud in a dull panic. Finn's arm around him was the only thing holding him up, and now his lungs were cleared of water he felt just like a wet bag with a hole in it. Maybe lots of holes. Breathing was a chore and being conscious  _ hurt _ , but—

_ Finn? Rey? BB-8?  _

"Finn," he gasped, and coughed again. Coughing was agony, and it turned into a wheeze of pain. 

Gods, he was so cold. Finn's chest was so warm. He wanted to die here.

“Yeah, Poe. Yeah,” Finn said, cupping Poe’s cheek and holding him as tightly as he dared against his chest. “I’m here. Stay with me. We gotta move now." 

This was all the warning Finn gave before he gathered Poe back into his arms and stood, trying to ignore the wheezing sounds of agony Poe was trying not to make. 

Eventually they were going to run into other stormtroopers, but it was still surprisingly empty—the stormtroopers clearly had no desire for death by drowning, or death by Eight-Seven on the warpath, or maybe the “Order 67” threat really had demoralized all of them.

“Where—Finn—”

"I’m right here, not putting you down. I've got you," Finn continued to assure Poe, trying to keep him from talking again. Poe’s voice sounded like he'd been swallowing broken glass—which more or less fit what he looked like. Finn couldn't stop and do anything more about it right now, but he could  _ feel _ things moving and grinding together under his hands that really shouldn't move and definitely shouldn't grind together like that. There was still a lot of blood coming from non-specific wounds that were still partially covered by bacta foam all along Poe's left side, and he couldn’t stop staring at where Poe’s arm used to be.

Finn shifted Poe slightly in his hold as they rounded a corner, and was about as surprised to see the stormtroopers in his path as they were to see him and his bloody armful. “Shit.”

“FN-2187, you will come with us into custody,” instructed a mask-filtered voice, and Poe tensed in his arms.

But before Finn could put Poe down or reach for his blaster, two of the squad turned their weapons on their two comrades and shot them, point-blank.

Finn gaped as the smoke cleared.

"We're with you, Eight-Seven. LT-9266 told us you were here. What do you need from us?" one asked.

Finn blinked, worried he shouldn’t trust them, but finding he had no other choice: 

"Take me to your Medbay first, if it's safe," Finn responded. It wasn’t strictly part of the plan, but Poe was in worse shape than he had expected. “Helmets off. I want to see your faces.”

The two stormtroopers left their helmets behind and took up positions in front of him, guiding and guarding at the same time.

...

"FN-2187 is on this ship! Apprehend him!" Hux screamed into a comlink as he ducked for cover behind a wall of stormtroopers. 

"And get reinforcements!" he cried, as Rey cut them down, kicking and spinning and hacking. The seventh was some lightsaber form. 

“Somebody shoot her!” 

At first, Rey didn't pause to think whether some of these stormtroopers had been waiting for a chance to defect or whether they had just weighed their odds of survival, but some actually dropped their blasters and ran, and others turned on their fellows and helped Rey to mow them down. 

This gave her pause, and a more discerning lightsaber.

"You've lost," she said, advancing on Hux, when he stood alone with a gaggle of sad-looking officers. "You have failed, General. And you're going to  _ pay _ for what you did to my fiancé, and what you did to all those children, and what you did to  _ Finn _ —and all these men and women here." 

"Not so fast," said a tinny, feminine voice behind her, and Rey ducked and rolled for cover as a blanket of blaster fire was emptied into the room.

Rey leapt to her feet as soon as there was a pause in the cover fire and charged Captain Phasma, lightsaber spinning to block the incoming blaster bolts and hoping to take her by surprise. 

The dual lightsaber should have given anyone pause, but Phasma was not just anyone. She whirled out of the way of two swings—how could someone wearing so much armor  _ move  _ like that?!—and slammed her blaster into Rey's arms, trying to make her drop the lightsaber. 

Instead Rey dropped herself to the ground, dragging Phasma with her. Then the saber spun out of her grasp and shut off, and she and Phasma wrestled briefly before the stormtrooper found just enough space to bring her fist up and crash it into the side of Rey's head. 

While her ears rang, Rey tried to stagger to her feet and call her lightsaber to her to continue the attack, but Phasma, instead of  _ coup de grâce _ -ing her, was already rushing Hux from the bridge, ready to shoot at anyone who came near her.

Blast doors slammed shut behind them. 

“Damn it!” Rey cried, and threw her lightsaber against the door.

…

By the time they reached the medbay, Finn had gained several more squads of stormtroopers. 

They had removed their helmets, and marched with their eyes on Finn, like they were watching a religious figure, a savior, a god—that was  _ FN-2187 _ , bearing the pilot prisoner with him like a talisman. 

And Finn objectively knew better than to trust that all of them actually wanted out and weren’t just waiting for an opportunity to kill him and Poe, but, well, he really wanted to trust them, and really needed to, and maybe all he needed to do was trust in the Force?

"F-Finn," Poe gasped, choking again, a wheeze ending on a whimper. They had to stop moving. He was cold. He was dizzy. He was  _ dying _ . "Where’s Rey?"

"She's here, Poe, we're going to see her in a bit," Finn's voice promised, going in and out, and sounding oddly muffled. "Hang on, love. Hang on." 

In the medbay, the doctors were only too glad to do their best—the blasters pointed at them were something of a formality—but Finn was surprised and kind of glad to learn that the First Order didn't  _ just  _ mistreat their stormtroopers. They actually  _ didn't _ have the same amenities even the very poor Resistance had. 

Unless you wanted to turn a human into a cyborg, your only other options were bacta patches or an airlock. Finn found  _ he  _ had more actual medical training than most of the medics here. Someone had to go get a life support unit from an emergency kit since they didn’t even have proper oxygen masks here. 

Poe was gasping and trembling violently as Finn laid him out on a table and covered him with heated blankets. He seemed to be trying to speak, but couldn't get enough air or energy. 

"It's all right, Poe, it's all right," Finn whispered, petting his hair softly, avoiding a gash across his skull, and squeezing his hand, avoiding broken fingers. He fit the breathing mask over Poe’s nose and mouth carefully. “Just breathe, okay? Don’t try to talk, you’re okay.”  

“Finn—can’t  _ see _ .”

“I know. I know.” Then Finn straightened and turned away to whisper into his comlink, voice shaking: "Rey. Rey, where are you? We need to leave. Poe is dying and I don’t think I can get him back to the TIE." 


	8. Chapter 8

" _Poe is dying,_ " Rey heard, and decided she didn't need to go after Phasma and Hux, after all. She needed to get the bridge locked down.

"BB-8," Rey said, now with an idea of her own. Her lip was bleeding, and she licked it. "Lock every door on this ship. Lock down _every_ one. And keep them locked."

[Affirmative, Friend-Rey. I cannot sense Friend-Poe's vitals] the droid informed her, as distracted as they all were.

"You're just out of range, Bee. It's okay," she said firmly. "He’s gonna be okay. Lock all the doors. Finn, keep him alive. We're taking the entire ship home."

Rey glared around her, brandishing a blaster and her lightsaber. She wasn't good at this. Not like Finn was. "To your stations."

Most of the remaining crew in the bridge were at least _frightened_ into returning to their stations. 

Rey was in command, at least as long as she kept blasters trained on everyone. Finn might afford to be trusting. Rey couldn’t.

"Surface and prepare for launch. This thing is spaceworthy, isn't it?" 

"She is, ma'am." 

The pressure changed as they rose from the water, and Rey found herself yawning to pop her ears more than once. They paused briefly at the surface as the computer checked and double-checked all seals to ensure they were spaceworthy. Then, with a massive chorus of creaking metal and rushing water, the engines under the destroyer revved to life and began lifting them clear of the water.

Rey watched out the bridge’s viewport as water streamed off the top of the destroyer and down the sides, and marveled at the cloud of steam that rose around them as the massive ship's engines burned the ocean to gain them altitude.

"What's the name of this vessel?" Rey stood with legs apart and hands clasped, watching the star destroyer take to the sky, make adjustments, and then cut through atmosphere to open space.

"Uh, the _Helldiver_ , ma'am."

Rey raised an eyebrow and turned around.

"That's...really her name."

"All right. Make the jump to lightspeed. Where do I input the coordinates?" she said, not stupid enough to let anyone else do them, though she otherwise walked around the bridge as if she had known these people her entire life—at least as long as she had weapons and they did not.

It felt a lot like being back on Jakku.

A pretty, petite woman, who reminded Rey of Timons in her mannerisms, stood up and stepped aside, giving Rey her console.

"Thank you," she said, programming the nav computer by hand. "BB-8. Send the coded rendezvous message. Tell them we've got Poe and we need to meet them halfway. Better add that we’ll be in an enemy vessel."

[Affirmative] BB-8 answered. [Then can I get out of here?]

"Stay there for now, Bee, you'll be safe. I promise we won't leave you behind." Rey clicked her comlink over. "Finn? We're making the jump to lightspeed. On our way home. H-how's Poe?"

Poe wasn't doing well. Finn was doing his best, with the medics, to keep him alive. It would have been easier if they hadn't unfrozen him, but Finn suspected it had been a last-ditch effort of the First Order to strike a devastating blow as they retreated. And as Finn tried to work with substandard medical supplies, a small and unwelcome voice in his heart whispered to him that the Order might yet succeed, nearly stopping his heart in his chest.

Finn couldn't lose Poe again. He couldn't.

"Just make this giant fly as fast as it can. I don't know what to do and they have _nothing_ on this ship," he answered her, beginning to panic. Poe was still shivering, but less violently, and Finn had no idea of that was good or bad.

“I—I’m ok-kay, buddy,” Poe managed, wrenching his eyes open like they might work this time. “Bud?”

“Poe, hey, Poe,” Finn murmured, curling protectively around him. “Of course you’re gonna be okay, Poe Dameron.”

“N-not. Not gonna die,” Poe insisted, sure he could feel Finn’s anguish on top of his own. “Don’ worry.”

“Worried? Me?” Finn asked, but it rang a bit hollow. “I’m staying calm.”

It was an old joke, and Poe’s mouth curled into a grin. After that, Finn almost thought Poe had fallen asleep when—

“We got a wedding.”

Finn’s heart crumpled in on itself, and he barely managed, “Right. That’s still on.”

“T-tell—”

“ _Poe_ …” He really needed to stop talking. Finn’s _hope_ was holding Poe’s lungs together at this point.

“Tell Bee not to wor...ry. Overheats...”

“I told them, Poe,” Finn said. “Now rest for me.”

Poe gave an aborted nod, and Finn started on proper triage: the wounds on Poe's whole left side were going to be the death of him, if anything was. All he could do was clean as much of the blood as possible so bacta bandages would stick, but even this was proving a challenge—as soon as he lifted the towel to apply the bandage, the blood would drip down Poe’s side all over again. Finn needed more hands, or a bacta tank, or preferably an actual medical professional, and all he had were these kriffing inadequate supplies and some terrified First Order medics who probably couldn't even stitch a Force-damned wound shut properly.

One of the few bandages he’d made stick peeled off and he snapped, about to throw something across the room when a shaking pair of hands took the towel from his hands and pressed it to the wound. For a moment, Finn stared down the person in front of him who had _dared_ to touch _his_ Poe.

“Get the bandage ready to apply as soon as I lift my hands,” the woman told him. A First Order medic, an older woman with dark skin and white hair. 

And if Finn was anything, he was good at following orders and good at knowing when he needed help, even if he didn't _want_ it, even if he hated it, and damn his trusting heart that would one day be the death of him or those he loved…

He held a new bandage close to the towel, and as the medic lifted her hands, he pressed it to Poe's side and held it until it was well and truly stuck. When he hesitantly let go, it remained that way, and he breathed. The medic was already cleaning another portion of the giant wound that was Poe’s side, and Finn could do this. He could cover wounds with bandages and hope Poe’s blood would stay where it belonged. The only thing to do for his lungs and how little air he was getting was keeping the emergency oxygen mask on him to force the oxygen into his lungs and bloodstream. But even then, Poe’s lips were taking on a grey hue, and his breathing was rough and too fast.

"He needs a transfusion," Finn said suddenly, and looked around.

He would have been glad to have volun-told someone, but several of the terrified troopers offered themselves up, shiny-eyed with an almost religious zeal, like they couldn’t believe they could do something to help.

“What’s your name?” he asked the young man with Poe’s bloodtype who sat next to Poe while the medics set up a blood transfusion.

“LF-7239. Leftie, sir. Are the stories about you true?”

Finn smiled, trying to relax a little. “Probably just the one.”

Leftie looked down at Poe. “Is he really the same pilot?”

“Yeah.” Finn’s smile almost reached his eyes that time. “He, ah. This kind of thing happens a lot, actually.”

Leftie nodded. “Not this bad though, huh?”

“No. Not this bad.”

...

Overhearing the stretching silence on her comlink, Rey shifted, unsure if she should tell Finn about their _other_ problem, or take care of it herself.

"Finn.”

A beat.

“Yeah?” He sounded distracted.

“Phasma and Hux are still on the ship,” Rey revealed, all in a rush. “At large. One of us should probably...find them. I'm sure they can override anything BB-8 can do."

[Excuse you] BB-8 snapped, but then reevaluated a bit. [I mean okay they _might_.]

“I  _can’t_ ,” Finn said fiercely, automatically. He couldn’t leave Poe like this, much less to go confront his two _least_ favorite people in the entire galaxy. Even after all this time away and free, Hux and Phasma and everyone high up in the First Order command structure still scared Finn.

Finn wasn’t a coward, but there were just some problems he’d really rather throw his Force-wielding-fiancée at rather than deal with himself.

"Do you want me to leave the bridge?" Rey asked, with a bit of an edge.

 _Which is it, Finn?_ he asked himself. _Leave Poe, or have Rey leave the bridge?_

The answer was obvious to Finn’s tactical mind. But what did it matter (the smaller part of him argued) what happened to the rest of the ship if something happened to the one reason they were here in the first place?

But if Hux or Phasma gathered forces, and made their way here, or re-took the bridge…

“You stay there,” he told Rey. “I’ll find them.”

But nothing could make leaving Poe there in medical any easier or kinder to either of them. Finn bent to kiss Poe gently on his cracked, bruised lips. "Hey. I have to go take care of something.”

Finn had thought Poe was asleep or unconscious, but Poe’s eyes shot open at this, rolling around in his head as blind as a doll’s eyes.

“But I will be back,” Finn promised, speaking over whatever Poe thought about saying.

“Repeat it to yourself until I get back, if you need to. 'Finn will be back. I'm safe. Finn will be back.' Just like that," he told him, and then straightened. He turned to the medics and the assembled stormtroopers.

"Do anything to harm him, or let anything happen to him, and you'll wish I would kill you," he told them, keeping it vague because they didn’t have to know that he didn’t condone torture of any kind.

He waited for BB-8 to unlocked the door and lock it again behind him. Before the door shut, he heard one of the troopers shout a slightly shaky, "Good luck!" to which a medic added, "We'll take care of him!"

“Finn,” Poe finally managed, but he was gone.

 _Finn will be back_ , Poe repeated to himself, his blind eyes sliding unseeing around the room. There were voices murmuring around him, none of which he trusted or could even understand. Where was Finn going? What was so important? What if—

 _Finn will be back_ , he told himself, and shuddered. Someone laid another blanket over him. It didn’t help.

...

"This way, you fool," Phasma barked, shoving Hux in front of her. "They've taken over the ship."

She emptied a few shots into the door controls, and wrenched it open with her bare hands. "And everything's locked down."

"So we get to an escape hatch. We need to report to the Supreme Leader," Hux sneered.

Gods, she hated looking at his smug face—all the more knowing, now, about Order 67.

Her stormtroopers were willing to die for the Order. _She_ was willing to die for the Order.

She did not like having to be prepared to be killed _by_ the Order.

...

As soon as Finn reached an intersection of halls and made sure it was clear, he consulted with BB-8. "Can you find them for me, buddy?" he asked, and BB-8 made a whirring sound.

[They are in the vicinity of deck eight, bulkhead thirteen. Docking bay fifteen] they answered.

Finn felt about ready to cry. That meant basically nothing to him right now, and he needed to get back to Poe.

[BB-8 can tell you the way! Turn left] the droid told him, and continued directing him until he was in about the right place.

Finally, [They are in one of the rooms directly ahead of Friend-Finn.]

Finn started down the hall, peering into the rooms as he went. They were mostly dark except for a single emergency light that lit the hall. It was beginning to feel cold, and Finn needed to ask BB-8 if the life support was still running in all sections. An entire star destroyer was a lot for any one droid to keep an eye on, even one as clever as BB-8.

Light streamed through a single door’s small, round window and into the hall. Finn slipped down the corridor to check inside, blaster at the ready. This didn’t look like an armory or any kind of defensible room—in fact, Finn wasn’t entirely positive this wasn’t a docking bay. Also, the door panel was shot out. 

A quick glance confirmed Hux and Phasma were inside, without any other troops. What were they doing in here? Escaping?

Finn slammed his fist on the window.

"Captain Phasma?” he shouted. There was no way Finn was going to negotiate with Hux. “It’s Finn. We have control of this ship, and this is your one chance to surrender.”

“You stupid fool, there’s only two of you!” Hux sneered. “We’re not surrendering!”

“I don’t think you want to find out how few of your troops remain loyal to you," Finn explained. “You’re trapped in there. Nowhere to go but outer space: probably a lot worse than the open ocean, if that was what you were going to try.”

"The First Order will never bow to you!" Hux snarled, braver now that he had Phasma and a blast door in between them.

Phasma, to Finn’s great surprise, removed her helmet. Her face was sweaty, her short hair braided tight to her skull under her mask. She looked more human—more scared—than Finn had ever seen her.

"You know I cannot surrender, Eight-Seven,” she said, as though Hux weren’t there at all and it was just the two of them. 

"...Even now the _Finalizer_ has picked up our distress signal and is on its way,” Hux went on, not liking being ignored. “If you take us back to your base we'll know where it is and destroy your pathetic Resist—"

"Oh, _shut up_ , General," Phasma snapped, backhanding Hux without looking at him.

"You knew," she told Finn—or, asked him. Her voice sounded uncharacteristically soft without her helmet, and Finn was having trouble reading her. "You always knew how dispensable we were to them. Was that why you left?"

"Yes," Finn said, “and no.”

Part of him wondered if this was some kind of trap or a genuine question. The best stormtroopers were the worst liars—and Phasma always had been one of the best. "You love order so much you'll kill for it, or die for it. I wasn't willing to sell my life for something that needed to use force to achieve its ends. To achieve selfish, evil ends. To kill innocents. There is nothing honorable about the First Order.”

"The First Order is the _new_ Order!" Hux cried shrilly, but shut up this time when Phasma looked at him.

"We were going to make the galaxy better," Phasma insisted, but without much force. She added, like these were the last two shots in her power cell, and she knew they were weak, "Good soldiers follow orders, Eight-Seven."

Finn smiled, but it was sympathetic, not mocking, and shook his head. After all, he'd had a lot longer to grapple with these things. Phasma had had...maybe a half hour? 

"Not all orders are reasonable. And...I’m learning that that’s as true in the Resistance as it is in the First Order." Finn remembered his disagreements with Leia. "Only difference is that _there_ it’s okay to question.”

“Chaos,” Phasma spat. "Disorder."

“No,” Finn said, his face full in the window now, for her to try to shoot him if she wanted to. “Questioning does not breed chaos, it promotes reason. Massacring helpless civilians because they don't fit in a definition of order is not _reasonable_. Sinking a ship with thousands of lives, saving only a lucky few in escape pods, is not reasonable. Those miners, Captain, who were unionizing for a living wage that the First Order wouldn’t pay them—killing them was not reasonable. Same with that Jakku village: just because no one was alive to talk does not mean that every destroyed village doesn't weaken the First Order’s reputation in the galaxy. Destroying an entire facility of thousands of clones perhaps a week from birth age just because someone found them...goes so far beyond unreasonable."

Phasma rounded on Hux, and they both slowly became aware of the power imbalance between them shifting. The General, conniving and physically weak; the Captain, a soldier's soldier, a towering figure. She could snap his neck with two fingers. "You gave all those orders against our soldiers? Against _my_ soldiers? Against our clones?"

Finn's appeals to goodness and humanity apparently hadn't moved her, but let it never be said that Captain Phasma gave no thought to her troops. 

“You...didn’t know about that?” Finn asked, goading her only slightly.

Hux, panicked, drew himself up. "This is insubordination, Captain! I'll not have my methods questioned! Rebellion is increasingly becoming a security risk, because _you_ don't control your men!"

Finn jumped when she grabbed Hux by the throat.

"Not _men_. Troops, sir," she snarled, and Finn was a bit surprised that casual sexism was somehow the final straw.

She turned to Finn, letting Hux's face turn blue as he struggled. "What will happen to my troops if they surrender to you?"

Finn had a feeling about where this was going, given the absence of Phasma in her own question. Finn drew himself up for this: soldier to soldier, commander to commander.

"I will make sure they are treated fairly. Any who wish to join the Resistance will get that chance. Any who don't want to join will be probably sent to a prison planet for temporary detainment. We won't use force unless it's necessary, and I won’t let anyone who surrenders be harmed," he assured her. "We’ll treat them like the Resistance treated me. Give them a chance to be...people. Not just soldiers."

He glanced at Hux as the general gasped and gagged, and Finn couldn't find it in himself to feel sorry for the man.

"But they _are_ soldiers, FN-2187," Phasma reminded him, jolting his focus back to her, and Finn couldn't help but think she was revealing something about herself. "Many of them won't be able to stop being soldiers."

She glanced at the control panel and then back at Finn. "You'll never stop being a soldier, either, F-N—Finn."

Finn had nothing to say to that—couldn’t bring himself to tell her to stop, even as he saw it happen as though in slow motion—so he only watched as she flipped the panel open and yanked down on the red lever to open the airlock.

The bay doors opened, and Finn's only consolation was that—for her, at least, because Hux was probably already dead—death was quick, scattering her body across the hyperspace lane to land across the star systems they passed through.

Finn looked away.

After pausing to acknowledge what Phasma had just done—for herself, for her troops—for _him_?—Finn took a deep breath and had BB-8 patch him through the star destroyer’s PA system, broadcasting to the whole ship.

"This is Finn. Eight Seven. General Hux and Captain Phasma are dead.” He took a breath. “Rather than continue to serve an Order who thought of herself and her troops as disposable, the Captain opened an airlock on herself and the General. May the Force be with her."

He let that sink in for a moment as he heard the door to the vacuum of hyperspace slide shut.

"No one else has to do that today. I promised her that any troops who surrender to the Resistance will be treated fairly and humanely. Please remain where you are."

And hopefully without their two senior leaders, no one would be inspired, at least, to attack them. Knowing the First Order, a few lieutenants or captains might see this as a chance for promotion or advancement, but Finn didn’t think many stormtroopers or techs or crew would be inclined to follow them. A few middle-grade officers with delusions of grandeur wouldn’t pose a great threat.

Finn glanced once more into the room where Phasma had killed Hux, as though to make sure they were gone, truly and that easily, and then started making his way back toward medical through eerily empty halls.

"Finn?" Rey's voice came through his personal comlink after he made the announcement.

"What just happened?" she asked, wondering if perhaps that had been a bluff. "Phasma and Hux—?"

"She opened the airlock on her own, I promise," Finn said. He didn’t want to hash out the details. He was following soft machine-whisper directions from BB-8 when he wasn’t going ahead of them by memory. "She asked what would happen to her troops. I told her they’d be treated fairly, like I was."

Two lefts, straight, another right.

"Are you okay?" 

Up a lift. Right. Straight. 

"She...told me some of them won't be able to stop being soldiers. I think that's why she killed herself."

Finn had to admit he wouldn't have entirely known what to do with her. But he would have _tried_.

"She said I'd always be a soldier, too," he added softly. But this couldn't possibly be true. He'd already learned so much of being more than just a soldier. He would honestly prefer to be anything else.

He didn’t want to deal with it now. "I'm—I'm going to go take care of Poe."

"Okay," Rey said, not sure what else she could say. "We're, uh, still a few hours to the rendezvous. Let me know what you need, Finn. The Force will be with you."

What Finn _needed_ was reassurance and comfort and for all of this to be a horrible nightmare that he could wake up from, finding Rey and Poe somehow both alive and safe in bed with him after a long, intensely real-seeming nightmare. Failing that, Finn would settle for rest, or for certainty that Poe would be alright. Hours sounded like an eternity, especially when he reached medical to find that Poe was in just as bad a shape as he remembered. He lay unmoving and only barely breathing on the table, and deadly pale.

"No change, sir," someone reported as Finn barreled past, but Poe's breath hitched at the sound of Finn's voice.

Finn went to his side and kissed Poe's forehead, as the medical team found somewhere else to be. "Hey, love. I'm back, just like I promised," he whispered.

"Finn," he managed to say, and dredged up a smile from somewhere, his breath fogging up the mask. "Knew you—you would.”

Poe had to rest and breathe before he could go on.

"You okay?" he asked Finn, in a moment of lucidity. "Can't—see."

Finn pet Poe's hair, hushing him softly so he wouldn't burn energy talking. "I know, I know. I’m okay, Poe. I’m okay, and you’re okay. We'll get you to Dr. K soon. She'll have you dosed up on the good stuff before you know it."

He kissed Poe's forehead again, and then his closed eyes, fighting back tears.

"Kay," Poe said, and attempted a deep breath, and coughed, wracking his whole body.

"Gods, _shit_ ," he swore. "You said, ah..." Crap, he was losing focus again. "You said Rey and Bee were here?"

Poe paused, considering asking Finn to tell them that—but no. He’d tell them.

"Don't go," he said instead.

It was scary, being trapped inside a dying body like this. Finn's presence was the only thing that didn't hurt. "Don' go."

"Yeah, buddy. They're here. And I'm here," Finn answered. Poe looked scared, in a way Finn had never seen him look scared. "Hey. Listen, don't talk. You're gonna be okay. I’m not losing you again. You're not going anywhere. I've got you now."

Finn gently took his hand, careful of the broken bones. "We're safe."


	9. Chapter 9

"Finn? Major Finn? Rey, do you read me? This is the _Vapor_ hailing the _Helldiver_ , do you copy?"

Finn had dozed off at Poe's side, and he nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of a familiar voice. That was Luke, bless him.

"Yes, yes. We're here," he blurted out, on the very verge of tears as he checked Poe's vitals. How had he fallen asleep?!

But Poe was still alive, thank all the gods and the Force and everything good in the world.

"Where are you now? Rey, come in!"

"Finn, I'm here. Luke, looks like we'll meet up with you in twenty minutes. We don't know what the insurrection looks like on the rest of the ship, but we can get Poe to a docking bay to transfer him over to the _Vapor_. Do you have a medic onboard?"

"Yes, Major Kalonia is on standby. Kes is here, too, and Lieutenant Torch is commanding a platoon to secure the...uh, _star destroyer_?” He sounded impressed. “You'll give command over to him. Welcome home."

Rey's hands were shaking, but luckily the _Vapor_ did all the docking work, hooking up its umbilical as close to medical as they could.

“Rey? Major Finn? This is Torch. We’re coming for the Commander and Finn first, then BB-8, and then Rey on the bridge. Please confirm.”

“Yes, we hear you. See you soon,” Rey said.

“Confirmed. _Hurry,_ ” Finn added.  

He looked around the room, making an effort to care about anyone besides Poe. “Uh. When they come, you’ll surrender your weapons. They—no one’s gonna hurt you. Just cooperate. I’ll vouch for you.”

And then he returned to Poe’s side, getting him ready for transport. “Hey, Poe, you hear that? Almost there, buddy. Hang on for me.”

This time, Poe didn’t even stir.

When Torch arrived with his squad and medics, escorting Dr. Kalonia herself, the First Order medical facility became a chaotic hub of activity.

“Major, Major, we’ll take him from here,” someone had to repeat to Finn several times, and Dr. Kalonia’s shouted orders blurred together for Finn.

When half the squad escorted Dr. Kalonia, with Poe on a gurney, out of the room at a quick clip so they could get him onto the _Vapor_ , Finn actually felt like he was going to faint, and was surprised to find himself suddenly in a chair with Coni crouching in front of him, holding both his shoulders.

“Finn? Finn, I need you to breathe. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. He’s going to be okay.”

“Need you to take care of them,” he found himself saying, dazedly, motioning at the stormtroopers and medics in the room, who stood up against a wall. “They helped me.”

“Okay, Finn. Don’t worry. We’ll look after them. When you think you can stand, I’ll take you to meet up with BB-8 and Rey, all right?”

“I want to be with Poe.”

“That’s what I mean. We’ll all go back to the _Vapor_ , okay?”

Finn didn’t remember the journey, but he eventually found himself in the anteroom outside the medbay on the _Vapor,_ and if there was bustling in medical, it was quiet outside. It was shocking to go from chaos to such sudden stillness and quiet and _safety_ , and he felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut. With a soft grunt, Finn sat down hard on one of the long benches that were set into the wall and put his head in his shaking hands. Coni had left again, and all available personnel were securing the star destroyer. Finn wasn't going anywhere any time soon.

...

Rey's comlink crackled.

"Rey? You can open the blast doors, it's us," Jessika said, and Rey punched in the access codes herself.

Jess and Karé marched into the room to pull her into a hug. Pilots and soldiers followed after her, relieving the First Order stormtroopers and pilots from their positions.

"Thank you," Jess whispered, and then pulled back from Rey and saluted. "You're relieved."

"I hate this military shit," Rey huffed. "I don't get it. Where's Poe?"

Reist stepped up. "I'll take you back to the _Vapor,_  ma'am."

The walk through the star destroyer halls was a blur of all the walls looking the same, but getting to the _Vapor_ and seeing Finn was like seeing a light at the end of a dark tunnel.

"Oh, Finn," she said, collapsing into his arms.

BB-8 had also just arrived, led in by their two favorite techs, but the droid was rocking nervously. [Cannot read vitals....error...cannot read vitals...error...]

Finn hadn't been paying attention, so when Rey flopped down into his lap, he startled and realized BB-8 was right next to him as well—and the droid was upset. Finn slung an arm around Rey and gave her a squeeze before bending to put a palm on BB-8's dome.

"Buddy, hey, stop for just a second," he said, and BB-8 stopped moving to swivel their optic lens up at him.

[Something is wrong with Master-Poe. Something is wrong with BB-8] the droid said, trying to offer a solution to the problem, but sounding so forlorn about it. [If they will only let BB-8 see…]

"You can't sense his vitals because he doesn't have his sensor chip anymore. It was in his left hand, right?" Finn asked.

BB-8 whistled a soft affirmative.

"He uh...he doesn't have that anymore, remember? His left arm. Most of it," he explained. BB-8 was quiet for a moment before making a strange, soft, nails-on-metal shriek that wound down to a crunching noise. Finn wasn't sure how to interpret it, so he just patted BB-8's dome, trying to comfort them. "He'll be okay, guy. Dr. Kalonia will make him better, huh?"

BB-8 rocked, but seemed to accept this. [Humans are difficult to repair.]

“I know, buddy.”

Finn looked at Rey, and asked, now that they were close enough she probably could, under ordinary circumstances, "Do you feel anything? And do you know where Luke and Kes are?"

"No—I don't know," Rey said, sounding distracted, and peering in through the door to the surgery room. She stood up and moved closer. Occasionally she heard shouts and felt things like alarm and frustration, and with focus she narrowed her thoughts carefully to Poe.

He didn't feel like much of anything, but he was _there_ , and it was such a relief that Rey nearly sobbed.

"He's hurt, but—" she shook her head. "He's there."

She turned to Finn, dizzy for a moment. "How was he when you left him? How did he look?"

Finn just looked at Rey and shook his head. He didn't want to remember how Poe had looked. He'd looked scared, like he was in excruciating pain, like he was sure he was dying and didn't want to leave them.

"He didn't look okay," he told her, eventually, and held his hand out toward her, a silent plea for her to come back to him.

"That doesn't exactly help, Finn," Rey said, but she crawled back into Finn's lap. They were quiet for a few moments, but when Finn didn’t say anything she tried again.

"He didn't mess up his pretty face too much, did he?" she said, but Finn's laugh was wet, and she could only manage a soggy smile.

Finn sighed. Rey clearly had no intention of letting this go that easily, and he supposed she had a right to know what he did of Poe's condition.

"His face is less injured than the rest of him, but it’s relative. He's got broken bones everywhere and the whole left side of his body is a mess—I think that was from the crash—and he's missing half his left arm. From around the elbow, I think. He could feel everything, so his spine is probably alright, relatively speaking. He was sure he was dying," he told her. “We all were.”

Rey swallowed, but nodded, taking Finn’s list in like they were her own injuries.

"But he's alive," she said firmly, and wrapped her arms around Finn's neck. "We've got him back. That's worlds better than where we were," she murmured, pulling Finn's head against her chest so he could hear her heartbeat.

There was a mad scramble at the corridor, and Kes and Luke suddenly ran in, sprinting like men half their ages.

"Luke!" Rey cried.

"Kes!" Finn said. They both stood up, disentangling.

"Where is he?" Kes asked, going for the door to the sickbay and finding it locked, and said frantically, "No, no, please, I gotta see my son. They won’t let us in?”

Finn, not sure how to help, touched Kes' shoulder gently.

"He's alive. They have to get him stabilized, but Kes—he's alive. And he's safe," he said, trying to offer some comfort. It made him feel better to try to comfort Poe’s father. "Rey can feel him again. He's there. He's not going anywhere, either."

But at some point it would be nice to hear confirmation from Kalonia. The longer it took, the more likely it was becoming that something had gone wrong...

Kes all but collapsed against Finn, hugging him, and pulled Rey into the embrace.

"Ah, my children, my—thank the gods you're safe," he said, weeping openly. "Tell me, you saw him alive? You talked to him?"

Luke was guiding them back to the chairs, standing over them. "He's strong, Kes. He's gonna be okay."

Finn let Luke guide them, more than happy to cede control of the situation to him.

"Yeah. I told him we'd rescued him, and that we were going home and he'd be okay," Finn answered softly. He leaned gratefully on Kes, and so did Rey, and their adopted father alternated leaning between the two of them. "I told him we aren't going to let him go again.”

Kes smiled.

"No we aren't. Oh, Finn, Rey," Kes said, and hugged them both close. "Neither of you are seriously injured?" he asked. Finn shook his head.

Rey thought, and then also shook her head.

"I might have a concussion?" she asked uncertainly when all three men looked at her.

Kes laughed, somehow glad to have something to worry about besides Poe, and took her head in his hands. "Can you tell me my name?"

"Of course, you're Kes Dameron."

Kes turned to Luke gravely. "I think she's badly concussed, she didn't call me ‘Dad.’"

This made Rey giggle and hiccup wetly. “Wait! If you’re here, where’s Sam?”

"Sammy is with Breha and Tano, they're at the house now," Kes expained. "Getting a room set up downstairs for when we get to take Poe home..."

Finn smiled at this—of course the extended Dameron-Bey clan would help. He sometimes forgot that families did those kinds of things for each other.

"I'm sure Sammy is excellent help for that, as long as they don't mind everything getting drool on it," he said. As an attempt at humor, it was fairly weak, but it was an attempt. "He'll be glad to see his Papa.”

"I'm sure his Papa will be glad to see him—or, you know, when he _can_ see," Kes corrected, remembering the likely damage from the First Order ray beam and the carbon sickness.

“Right.” Luke nodded at the trio. "I'm going to go get you something to eat, okay?"

There was no telling when Rey and Finn had eaten, but if Kes was anything to go by, they probably hadn't eaten all day, so Luke stood up.

"I swore I'd never eat another MRE again," Kes complained. “Only if they have _real_ food on this ship.”

Luke smiled. "We’ve been out of the business a while, Kes. They've changed them up since our day.”

"Okay, I'll try it."

"Atta boy, Dameron."

In the quiet that Luke left behind, Finn took some deep breaths and bent to talk softly to BB-8, who was still rocking themselves gently.

"Doin’ okay, buddy?" he asked.

[Master-Poe is hurt] they responded. [He is my pilot. I am supposed to keep him safe.]

Finn frowned and moved to the floor to sit with BB-8. "Fella, this isn't your fault. You did everything you could. You kept Poe safe for _way_ longer than any other droid could have. And you got his last message back to us. And we couldn’t have rescued him without you.”

[But he is not safe] they said again, with sad whistles. [It was not BB-8’s fault this time. Master-Poe ejected me—]

“I know, I know. We’ll lecture him later, okay? And you know he doesn’t like it when you call him that.” Finn wasn't sure how to deal with a guilt-ridden, depressed droid, so he did what he knew how to do—he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around the big, round body, pulling BB-8 into his lap like a giant metal cat.

"He’ll be all right, buddy," he said, arms still curled around BB-8. He looked up at Kes and Rey and shrugged one shoulder.

"Without you, Bee, we wouldn't have him back," Kes said, an arm around Rey as he pulled her into a hug. "So you've done a good job. Finn is right."

BB-8 made a sad, clunky whirring noise, but settled, and stopped beeping their concern.

"How about once we're allowed in there, I hook you up to the monitors?" Rey asked. "Then you can read all his vitals."

BB-8 swiveled their eye to Rey.

[Yes, please] they hooted, and Kes leaned back and smiled.

"He'll be okay," he told them, reaching for Finn's hand to squeeze it. "We're all gonna be okay."

...

When Luke came back, they all picked at their food (despite Luke's mother-henning to eat more). To alleviate the boredom, they had just cleared everything away to play a distracted and half-hearted game of sabacc when the door to the sickbay opened and Dr. Kalonia emerged. They all nearly tripped over each other trying to get to her, and she held her hands up to slow them.

"He's alive, and I am comfortable saying he is likely to stay that way," she said first, "However—they seem to have made the bare minimum effort to treat him after his crash, and his arm is the least of it," she told them, and motioned to the benches for them to sit. She seemed to want to sit, too.

"He has multiple broken bones, including ribs, his left leg, and his right hand and wrist. His lungs were both punctured and one collapsed, and he has pneumonia from some combination of that, the carbon freezing, and the water. He almost certainly has a concussion—it shouldn't cause any permanent damage, but with everything else, it will be awhile before he recovers from it. His eyesight will return in time, as it did with the pilots before, though I may have a way to speed that up."

She looked at all four of them.

"You're being very patient," Dr. Kalonia added with a slight smile. "I have him mostly sedated until we can be sure that his condition is stable, but if you promise not to wake him, you may go see him.”

With slightly less scrambling this time, they all stood.

Luke touched Kes' shoulder.

"The three of you go on. I'm going to go make sure Chewie and Lando are doing okay, and I'll update the others," he told him, and Kes nodded before pulling Luke into a hug.

"Thank you, Skywalker. Let us know when we're almost home?" he asked, and Luke nodded and gave them all a little wave before leaving.

Inside the cramped medbay, Poe lay under sterile white linens, and was almost as pale as them. He was covered in bacta patches and monitors, with tubes going in and out of him.  

Kes rushed to him, and then hovered, almost afraid to touch him. Finally, he rested a hand on his hair—it was cut short, Finn realized, and quite badly.

"He needed too many stitches, so we had to shave it," Dr. Kalonia explained, like anyone cared about his _hair_ right now. "He may yet need more. We have much better facilities on base, we'll need to grow some new organs for him. But he's stable now."

Kes lowered his head as though praying.

Rey stood at the foot of the bed in something like shock. It hadn't looked this bad in the holographic image, when he was in carbonite. Now he lay shivering and sweaty and so very fragile-looking that Rey was afraid to touch even his foot. What had Dr. Kalonia said was broken again? What could she touch?

"You can touch him," Dr. Kalonia encouraged. "Gently. I dare say it'll be good for him."

[Friend-Rey! Friend-Rey!] BB-8 hooted, bumping her shins. [Please hook me up! I wish to verify Friend-Poe's vitals!]

To everyone's surprise, Poe shifted, tossing his head away from Kes' hand.

"Needs a new chip," he mumbled, and his eyelids fluttered. “‘Sokay, Bee…”

[Yes! A new chip for BB-8!] the droid agreed. [Master-Poe?]

But Poe was out again.

Rey smiled tightly: of course, of all the things that would briefly waken a heavily sedated Poe Dameron, it would be his droid.

"Okay, BB-8, come over here. We'll figure out a chip when get home, but for now I'll just hook you in, okay?" Rey asked, and BB-8 rolled over to wait practically on top of her feet. They made a soft, excited buzzing noise as she popped one of their panels off and started gently tugging at a couple of loose wires. She found plugs on the back of the main monitor and plugged the cables in to some data ports BB-8 offered. "Better?"

BB-8 settled immediately, making a quiet whirring noise as they processed the information. They gave several sympathetic hoots, but otherwise just seemed better off knowing.

Less so for the rest of them. Someone brought in chairs, but Kes still stood over where Poe lay, and Finn was worried that Poe didn't look any better now that the doctors had seen him. In many ways he looked worse.

"Finn?" called a voice from the door. It was Jess, escorted by Coni and a big gun. She waved Finn outside. "How's he doing? We’re not allowed in."

"Dr. K. says he'll live," Finn said, offering Jess a small, worn smile. "He's uh—he's pretty messed up, though."

Jess nodded, taking this in, and then stepped forward to wrap Finn in a hug. Coni, too, sidled over to rest a hand on his shoulder and give a supportive squeeze, since the other hand was holding the massive gun that Finn didn't—

"Okay, hold on. Where did you get that?" he asked her.

She grinned at him.

"I found it," she answered. "Don't worry, boss, we secured the guns. You didn’t tell me the First Order had _these_ babies.”

"If by 'secured' you mean 'gave them to all your friends and kept the rest for yourself,’ you mean," Jess said to her.

"That’s neither here nor there. They're still secure. Technically," Coni answered. Jess snorted, but she was smiling.

"You're a menace," she informed Coni.

"Aw, you're sweet," Coni answered.

Finn stared at her for a moment and then nodded.

"Oh...kay, then. Uh, good work—was there something you needed?" he asked, glancing between the two women.

"Just to report," Jess said. "I know you've got more important things to worry about, but we'll want advice on how to process the stormtroopers. We've got about twenty thousand crew, ten thousand stormtroopers. Uh. I didn’t know star destroyers were this _big_ , Finn. A few hundred officers we'll be sending to the Republic to try for war crimes."

(A of good number of them had committed suicide, as had quite a few stormtroopers, but she didn't want Finn to have to deal with that now.)

"About half are claiming they want to defect and join us, but we'll be careful. What do we want to do with the others?"

"I told Phasma we'd hold them, as humanely as we can. It's probably best to split them up so they don't have strength in numbers. They're...brainwashed soldiers, right now. Some of them might come around, but a lot of them won't. I want them given the chance, but we can't risk our safety or anyone else's."

This had seemed a lot simpler to want to set free all the stormtroopers when he hadn't really thought about the magnitude of it. When there weren’t thirty thousand personnel to deal with.

"Shit, I don't know. Hold them until we get to Yavin. Their quarters should be locked, so lock them in. Make sure they've been offered food, water, and medical attention—preferably in teams, in case anyone gets any stupid ideas. I warned them we'd use force if necessary, and they know their bosses are dead or prisoners, so I imagine most of them won't offer much resistance unless we give them a really good opportunity," he said. He scrubbed a grand through his hair. This was going to be a mess. “Go deck by deck, I guess.”

Jess nodded. "Okay. We've got a few hours before we land. I've walked like, six miles already, by the way. This thing is _huge_! Now I know why you stormtroopers all have these perfect physiques. Anyway. I'll radio ahead our report, and, ah, warn the General we're dropping a star destroyer on her."

Finn nodded.

Then Jess smiled. "So, uh, some _good_ news. While you were gone. The New Galactic Senate has finally voted to officially condemn the First Order. It's not war, yet, but they are supplying the Resistance with troops. We might be folded back into the New Republic military—it's _wild,_  Finn. Looking up. You can tell Poe thanks for jumpstarting everything, when he wakes up."

She patted Finn's arm.

"Whoa, the ex-stormtroopers were that convincing, huh? Well, and Poe." He was pained for a minute—the Senate's support had almost come at the dearest cost. It shouldn't have taken so much to get them to open their damn eyes.

And if they thought they were going to take the Resistance and make it official and try to order around a bunch of rebels and First Order deserters, even through Leia, they were going to learn it wasn't quite so easy.

But Leia wouldn't let them try—Finn knew that. He was just angry at what had happened to Poe, and the Senate was a great place to direct that anger. If they had stepped in _sooner,_  none of this would have happened.

Finn shook his head and scrubbed his hand through his hair again. "Thanks, Jess. I'll let you know how he's doing when we have something else."

Jess nodded, and squeezed Finn's shoulder. "Go take care of my Commander for me. Tell him I don't want his job anymore. I do enough work for _you._ "

...

"We'll be landing soon," Dr. Kalonia informed them.

Rey, almost asleep, started up. Outside the porthole was the huge orange gas giant of Yavin. "Can you please step back so we can prep him for transport?"

"Of course," Kes said.

But as he lifted his hand from Poe's brow, Poe blinked and shifted.

"Oh! Hey! Hey, mijo, my boy," he soothed. "You awake, son?"

Poe blinked dizzily into the darkness, but his ears at least seemed to work.

"Papa?" he choked, and tried to move.

"Easy does it, now, Commander," Dr. Kalonia said. "We're going to take you into surgery, okay? I need you to relax for me."

"Where's—" Poe began, but gave up. He looked green.

BB-8 whistled something he missed.

"Rest, son, we're all here," Kes reported, giving his scalp one last gentle pat.

"Papa, can't—I can't _see,_ " Poe said, and then gave a sort of strangled cry that they realized was a sob.

"Okay, _okay_ , we need to sedate him now. He's in a lot of pain and going into shock..." Dr. Kalonia said as she and her medical team swept in.

"Poe? We're right here, Poe, it's okay," Rey said around a medical droid who was squarely in her way and trying to catalogue Poe's injuries. She could feel Poe panicking and confused, and still overwhelmed by the pain that was crippling his body.

He whimpered again as he was brought away, and Rey broke down in tears. Finn put his hands on Rey's shoulders and turned her to face him.

" _Hurts,_ " she whimpered against his chest.

"Mija, he's okay, you found him," Kes said, rubbing her back soothingly.

“Just breathe. Shut him out if you have to,” Finn whispered. “I know it’s a lot.”

Rey sniffled, but she took a few deep breaths and blocked that knot of pain out, and she pushed Finn away, too, because she couldn't handle feeling his pain, either.

When she straightened, her eyes were dry, and they followed after the medical staff, down the ramp and into the complete chaos caused by landing a star destroyer with nearly a full complement of personnel practically in General Leia Organa's lap.

Leia watched a body fly past her on a gurney—Poe—and she met him with grim determination. But perhaps luckily, she couldn’t see much of him for the medical staff and machines covering him.

And she had been _warned_ that they would be dropping an actual fucking Resurgent-class Star Destroyer on her doorstep, but it was another thing to see it in person, blocking out the sun.

It was actually scaring the locals just left there in orbit around Yavin IV, so she ordered it into orbit around the gas giant, where the radiation would keep it safe from detection. It would take a while to shuttle everyone back and forth, but it was going to take them longer than that to deal with all the stormtroopers. She wanted to go see it herself, actually, and assess the situation.

Pava disembarked—Statura had transferred to the _Helldiver_ to take command—and saluted smartly. Torch, in command of the specforces, was next to her.

Finn, Rey, and Kes filed out, looking dazedly around them, hardly noticing the crowd that had gathered, but trying to spot the gurney that was now long gone.

"Finn?”

Finn blinked around him, surprised by the sight of the general.

“Can I get a mission report from you now, or would you like to meet me in my office later?"

It took him a moment to realize that she was asking a question, and another moment to come up with an answer.

"Uh—um, I don’t—I’m not sure I—?"

Leia frowned, worried, but she nodded. “All right. Later.”

He clearly was in no condition to report anything.

"Which direction did they take Poe?" Rey asked, getting straight to the point, her tone bordering on too impatient to be respectful.

Leia nodded at Connix, who jumped up to lead them through to Medical.

"We've put in an order for a bacta tank," Connix said as they walked, "but even with the Republic on our side now, who knows if we can get one here."

Connix pressed her lips together. "We're glad you made it back. Glad you got him."

Finn and Rey said nothing. The surgery room door was closed when  they arrived, and they could only see in through a small window.

"I'll um—I'll see you later. I’ll bring by SRTF paperwork by for you to sign, Major," Connix said, and finally shuffled out.

Finn and Rey waited, with Kes and BB-8 with them.

...

After only about a half hour, a droid rolled through the surgery door, surprising all the humans and BB-8. It came up to them in a very businesslike manner and whirred softly before speaking.

[Doctor Kalonia has requested that I notify the family of Commander Poe Dameron that his present condition is stable. Surgery is expected to proceed in two six-hour shifts and a third four-hour shift. Dr. Kalonia will meet with you between shifts before resting for the requisite four hours before beginning the next surgery shift.]

Finn and Rey looked at each other, and at Kes. That sounded bad.

[A room will be made available for Commander Dameron's recovery and additional accommodation for up to three family members. You will be notified ten minutes prior to the conclusion of the first surgery shift, in approximately six hours. Dr. Kalonia thanks you for your patience and relays the message that 'You shouldn't worry,' and adds 'We all know Commander Dameron is too vain to die when he's the center of the galaxy's attention.']

That last bit startled a laugh out of Rey, a half-laugh, half-sob, and she smiled as the tears fell and Kes pulled her into a hug.

[If you have any further questions, you may page the medical team using the button on the wall. Thank you.]

The droid rolled away back to the surgery suite, leaving a slightly bemused, confused, but less worried audience behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The adventures of Rey, Finn, and Poe will continue in the next installment. 
> 
> Thanks to all who read, kudoed, and commented, especially Alva_Moondance, beautifullights, conn8d, GryfinnGal, InexplicableSatsuma, KatyaAnasazi, Kylaksa, Nina, Nytemere, sofiaottoman, and Zoe_Dameron. Never underestimate how important your support is!

**Author's Note:**

> Running List of OCs:
> 
>  **Breha Bey:** Female human, Poe's cousin, of comparable age to Rey and Finn.  
>  **Coni:** Female human Resistance soldier. Likes illegal tackles in Boloball.  
>  **Deeks:** Male human ex-stormtrooper, now pilot for the Resistance, complete dork.  
>  **Jonorai:** Female Twi'lek in charge of the Resistance daycare center.  
>  **"Nana" Dameron:** Female human in her late 80s, Kes's mother. Suffers selective dementia.  
>  **Reist:** Nonbinary human Resistance soldier.  
>  **Sam Dameron:** Finn's clone rescued from a First Order cloning facility, adopted by Finn, Rey, and Poe. Drools a lot.  
>  **Sevens:** Nonbinary human ex-stormtrooper now Resistance soldier. Dating Jessika Pava.  
>  **Dr. Tamo Lan:** Female Ewok doctor of psychology, therapist for ex-stormtroopers.  
>  **Timons:** Female human ex-First Order tech, was on the officer track before defecting. Major PTSD and anxiety.  
>  **Torch:** Male Zabrak Resistance soldier. Finn's second in command.
> 
> ...
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! And if you haven't read the rest of _Stars and Skies_ , we hope you'll check out the series.
> 
> Please consider letting us know what you like or what we can improve on in the Comments. You can also come bother us on Tumblr at [Maeglinthebold](http://maeglinthebold.tumblr.com/) and [A-singer-of-songs](http://a-singer-of-songs.tumblr.com/).
> 
> And a shout-out to the very supportive [SWWA](https://starwarswritingalliance.tumblr.com/)! 


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